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Pursue what catches your heart, not what catches your eyes.
“Pursue what catches your heart, not what catches your eyes.”
Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart.
Welcome back to our third online practical help “instalment” during the lockdown. We started this journaling journey on day 5 of the lockdown by focusing on Stillness. The next part of the journey, which started on day 10, involved Mindfulness. Today, day 15, we are adding Gratitude. Some may be familiar with this term, some of our earlier blogs (www.vaalpsychologists.co.za) have also dealt with this. Let’s recap though.
Wikipedia defines gratitude as – “Gratitude, thankfulness, or gratefulness, from the Latin word gratus ‘pleasing, thankful’, is a feeling of appreciation felt by and/or similar positive response shown by the recipient of kindness, gifts, help, favours, or other types of generosity, towards the giver of such gifts. The experience of gratitude has historically been a focus of several world religions. It has also been a topic of interest to ancient, medieval and modern philosophers, and continues to engage contemporary thinkers.”
But what is gratitude? As with many psychological concepts, a concise and agreed upon definition of this term is not available. The jury is still out, so to speak. Nevertheless, Watkins and colleagues (2003) suggest that grateful individuals would have 4 characteristics:
> They would not feel deprived in life
> They would appreciate others’ contributions to their well-being
> They would tend to appreciate simple pleasures (in other words, pleasurable things that are freely available to the majority of people): if an individual appreciates simple pleasures, they are likely to experience grateful feelings more often due to frequently being appreciative of commonly occurring experiences.
>Finally, grateful individuals acknowledge the important role of experiencing and expressing gratitude.
Additionally, many researchers have found several health benefits attributed to gratitude. These include –
> Improves sleep
> Strengthens psychological well-being and mindfulness
> Longevity
> Increases energy levels
> Increases likelihood of physical exercises
Heather Craig wrote a lovely article “The Research on Gratitude and Its Link with Love and Happiness”, I recommend reading this. The article can be found at https://positivepsychology.com/gratitude-research/
So, without further ado, let’s carry on with our journey of growth! Thanks lockdown!
PS: Have a look at the following free to download Apps that will give this process a further boost.