Nesting Gratitude

Growing with Gratitude

What is the seed of gratitude? Simply put, the word translates to ‘thanking’. Well, thank who, what or why, and most importantly, how? Let us try and figure this out with your imagination and a few words.  

We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today. 

Dale Carnegie

What is Gratitude?

Gratitude is being appreciative of what is. It is the recognition of connecting with the small things, events, actions, and apparent plain moments of our lives for we’ll eventually realize they are big, huge like the ocean being built drop by drop, like weaving a basket one twig at a time, like beading a necklace one pearl at a time. It is gazing in awe instead of a hollow glance. Gratitude is our anchor to the present, to fully relishing the moment. It is finding comfort in the now, in what is here, and in what we have because this is the truth, there is no changing of our past and no control of our future. Via gratitude, we align with mindfulness instead of oscillating back and forth between regrets and worries. Thankfulness is essentially savoring and honoring all that we have now. Perhaps this is what we’d wished for once upon a time, or this is an experience we need to learn and grow with. It is the counting of our blessings. It is the silver lining in the clouds. In loss and times of adversity, it is seeing the building of resilience. In disappointment, it is what helps us reflect on expectations. As the song goes jolly well, when ‘It looked like the sun wouldn’t shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the clouds.’ 

Gratitude: A habit

It is a skill for everyone, yes every single one of us can develop and nourish our lives with gratitude. Gratitude is an attitude that promotes adaptability and flexibility.  It is a muscle built with practice. This practice is an intertwined thought-emotion reflection and before we know it, we’re actively looking for things to be grateful for. It can be expressed both internally i.e to oneself and externally i.e to others. The quest for gratitude replaces negative emotions of complaining, irritability, and stress with the positivity of appreciation, compassion, and fascination. 

At the personal level, it could look like

I’m grateful for keeping my word that also helped me maintain integrity.

I’m grateful for keeping a small promise to myself, which also wires discipline and consistency.

I’m grateful for staying hydrated today, for taking care of myself.

I’m grateful to be safe.

It is saying, the party starts now, and here wherever I’m at.

Externalizing gratitude could look like

I’m grateful for a friend in ________, who listens to me.

I’m grateful to the song of the rain, and the raindrops on my skin that fill me with joy.

I’m grateful for my phone that keeps me connected and serves infinite resources with one click.

Maintain a gratitude journal where you write down your reflections on what went right regularly. Take a wrong happening, and flip it to your benefit as a learning experience. Giving it depth will exemplify the feeling. Smile so much more often, it’s viral. Write gratitude letters to your loved ones, mention specific traits that you admire, that you hope to take in, moments of bonding and memories made together. Service and volunteering help in perspective building. Practice and repeat affirmations. Remember that irrespective of what’s happening to you, you are in full control of your response to a given situation.

Tradition and Science

The gratitude trend is not recent. It has been in vogue since timeless ages through traditions. However, the context and conventions may have made its prevalence grey. Gratitude is monks paying their respects to the earth and its elements as the first ritual at dawn. Gratitude is Thanksgiving with family and loved ones to celebrate our being. That said, recent studies Research by neuroscientist Glenn Fox shows a correlation between gratitude and brain regions associated with interpersonal bonding and relief from stress. In another study by J. Wong and J. Brown, people who practice gratitude showed greater neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area associated with learning and decision making. Dr. Alex Korb says that just trying to think of things you are grateful for forces you to focus on the positive aspects of your life. This simple act increases serotonin i.e ‘happiness neurotransmitter’ production in the cortex.

What Gratitude is not–

Gratitude is not not moving forward. It does not mean one shall stop having goals. It is not being self-centered. Gratitude is not the free card to compare and feel superior. Gratitude is receiving deeply. Gratitude calls for the act of getting-out-of-your-own-head. It needs you to stop being so-full-of-yourself. It silences of the egoic voice of what’s missing and grounds us with what’s at hand. A vase will overflow to everything around it once full, but if it keeps pouring out in the mid of the process, again and again, it’ll break. Thankfulness is a constant filling up of ourselves first, a sense of completion, so we naturally emanate peace and joy to others. Gratitude is not blind optimism. Walk with gratitude as your guiding torch of light in the dark. Awash with waves of fulfillment and content with the present, we bloom. The math here is simple, we’re eager to strive well when there’s a sense of balance and satisfaction with our current state. With inculcating gratitude comes a shift in perspective towards becoming rather than escaping our reality. Giving thanks does not make you a people pleaser. This token is a shift from formality to the well-intended expression of meaningfulness. 

The seed of gratitude reaps boundless growth and grace. In nothing, I found gratitude~ for being.

Today, I’m grateful for having read a book. Even if it was just for ten minutes, I was transcended to a new dimension of experience very different from my physical surrounding, limitations, and situation, to a realm of being handcrafted by the writer and brought to life with my perception. 

Thank you for reading this.

I’d love to hear from you, your thoughts, and recommendations. Connect with me on ideas, music, movies, literature, well, anything and everything via e-mail at pragnya.naredi@gmail.com.

Pragnya Naredi Member since June 19, 2020

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