It's Time To Start Your Gratitude Practice

First published on February 26, 2020

Several years ago I was sitting with a client, looking for a way - as he and I did in our sessions - to deal with the pressure he was under and to be more efficective in his work. As part of our discussion, he remembered that he had a friend currently undertaking a PhD in happiness (amazing, right?). His friend had told him that one of the few things that genuinely affects our happiness was creating a gratitude practice. (This wasn't just a hairbrained idea of his friend, by the way. See the work of sociologist Brené Brown among many others for more on this.)

So we designed a new routine for him. Each morning, he would create ten extra minutes by getting up earlier. He would make a cup of tea, and while he drank it he would read a daily email he received, with useful philosophy in it, and then write three things he was grateful for. The next time we spoke, just a week or two later, it is no exaggeration to say that the energy he brought to the call was transformed from the previous conversation. 

Another client, frustrated by the negativity he brought not only to his work but to his wife and children, created a practice of, each day, noting down three things to be positive about. He and his wife, who I happen to know a little, both (and separately) later told me that it had made a big difference to him.

I struggled to create a gratitude practice, until I found out that my wife already had one, noting down five things she was grateful for every Monday morning. And whilst I couldn't create a practice for myself, if she shared her five things with me, then I could and indeed would share five with her. Each list I receive from her is deeply touching, reminding me - as a practice like this should - of the wonder contained in the world, but also deepening our connection. 

It can be useful to tie these practices to something. A cup of tea, like my client, someone else, like I did, or eating lunch, like futurist Jordan Hall. You can't forget lunch, he says, and that makes it harder to forget gratitude. 

Rule 12 of Jordan Peterson's extraordinary complete book, 12 Rules For Life, is to 'pet a cat when you encounter one in the street'. This is a practice in finding the small moments of light amidst the darkest days, or of looking for the extra light on the good days. This isn't easy, when things are hard.

A friend of mine faced with an incredibly difficult work situation was recently pretty much prescribed a gratitude practice by his GP. 

Noticing the small things, the things we are grateful for: that makes a difference. It is a chance to gradually (or swiftly) remind yourself that even in the darkest days, there are moments of light in the way the sun shines or the wind blows through the trees, in the way a cup of tea or coffee tastes, in the smile of a stranger, in the wonder of being born into the modern world. In the reaction of a cat, if you pet it.