5 Habits of Highly Grateful People

by Jeremy Adam Smith, syndicated from Greater Good,
Mar 19, 2014

Many people are unskilled at expressing gratitude.

Most of us usually take far too much for granted. Our health, our talents, our children, our families.

Gratitude (and its sibling, appreciation) is the mental tool we use to remind ourselves of the good stuff. It’s a lens that helps us to see the things that don’t make it onto our lists of problems to be solved. It’s a spotlight that we shine on the people who give us the good things in life. It’s a bright red paintbrush we apply to otherwise-invisible blessings, like clean streets or health or enough food to eat.

Gratitude doesn’t make problems and threats disappear. The threats are indeed real, but at that moment, they exist only in memory or imagination. I am the threat; it is me who is wearing myself out with worry.

That’s when I need to turn on the gratitude. If I do that enough, gratitude might just become a habit. It means, that I increase my chances of psychologically surviving hard times, that I stand a chance to be happier in the good times. I’m not ignoring the threats; I’m appreciating the resources and people that might help me face those threats.
Here then are some tips for how you and I can become one of those fantastically grateful people.

1. Once in a while, they think about death and loss

Contemplating endings really does make you more grateful for the life you currently have.

For example, when Araceli Friasa and colleagues asked people to visualize their own deaths, their gratitude measurably increased. The same applies to imagining that some positive event, like a job promotion, never happened.

When you find yourself taking a good thing for granted, try giving it up for a little while.

For example, In one study, The happiest were the ones who abstained from chocolate. And who were the least happy? The people who binged. That’s the power of gratitude!

2. They take the time to smell the roses

And they also smell the coffee, the bread baking in the oven, the aroma of a new car—whatever gives them pleasure.

The practice of mindfulness makes intuitive sense—Humans are astoundingly adaptive creatures, and we will adapt even to the good things. When we do this value starts to drop; we start to take loved ones for granted.

When this happens, take a step back—and imagine your life without them. Then try savoring their presence, just like you would a rose. Or a new car. Whatever! The point is, absence may just make the heart grow grateful.

3. They take the good things as gifts, not birthrights

What’s the opposite of gratitude? Entitlement—the attitude that people owe you something just because you’re so very special.

A preoccupation with the self can cause us to forget our benefits or to feel that we are owed things from others and therefore have no reason to feel thankful,”

Humans need other people to grow our food and heal our injuries; we need love, and for that we need family, partners, friends, and pets.

“Seeing with grateful eyes requires that we see the web of interconnection in which we alternate between being givers and receivers,” writes Emmons. “The humble person says that life is a gift to be grateful for, not a right to be claimed.”

4. They’re grateful to people, not just things

People will glow in gratitude. Saying thanks to a child might make him happier and it can strengthen emotional bonds. Thanking the guy who makes your coffee can strengthen social bonds—in part by deepening our understanding of how we’re interconnected with other people.

Saying ‘thank you’ to a person, your brain registers that something good has happened and that you are more richly enmeshed in a meaningful social community.

5. They mention the pancakes

Grateful people are habitually specific. “I love you for the pancakes you make when you see I’m hungry and how you give me hugs when I’m sad.

This makes the expression of gratitude feel more authentic. The richest thank you’d will acknowledge and costs and they’ll describe the value of benefits received

When Amie Gordon and colleagues studied gratitude in couples, they found that spouses signal grateful feelings through more caring and attentive behavior. They ask clarifying questions; they respond to trouble with hugs and to good news with smiles. “These gestures,”, “can have profound effects: Participants who were better listeners during those conversations in the lab had partners who reported feeling more appreciated by them.”

Remember: Gratitude thrives on specificity

“Life is suffering. No amount of positive thinking exercises will change this truth,” writes Emmons in his Greater Good article “How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times.”

So telling people simply to buck up, count their blessings, and remember how much they still have to be grateful for can certainly do much harm. Processing a life experience through a grateful lens does not mean denying negativity. It is not a form of superficial happiology. Instead, it means realizing the power you have to transform an obstacle into an
opportunity. It means re-framing a loss into a potential gain, recasting negativity into positive channels for gratitude.

That’s what truly, fantastically grateful people do. Can you?

Excerpted from http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_habits_of_highly_grateful_people ■