Gratitude & Happiness: How It Can Improve Yourself and Our Communities

November -- the time of year to give thanks and feel gratitude for the things and people you have in your life. However, this year it seems silly to spend only one month thinking about all the things you're most grateful for. 2020 has been a year full of uncertainty, challenges, and change which has caused many to realize how much we took for granted. Through gratitude we can find happiness within ourselves, about the things and people surrounding us, and extend that out to other people which can positively impact our communities while we continue progressing forward.

When you practice gratitude, you change yourself. And when you change yourself, you change the world.

- Jane Ransom, 2012, TEDxChennai

What Is Gratitude?

Gratitude is not a new practice as it has existed since the beginning of many religions and cultures, but this perspective of gratitude was typically directed towards a higher power.

Modern gratitude is essentially placing your focus on and appreciating the things you have rather than thinking about the things you don't have, even while facing hard times or difficult situations.

You can be thankful for having vision or for being able to run outside before it started raining. It can be really simple, however psychologists recommend digging deep in yourself to find what you're most grateful for. Digging deep within ourselves will help find new things to be grateful for everyday which will enhance the effects of a gratitude practice.

Gratitude Can Lead to Happiness

You may be wondering, can something so simple really lead to more joy in my life? In the Ted Talk video, "Discover the Three Keys of Gratitude to Unlock Your Happiest Life", speaker Jane Ransom believes so.

Ransom discusses how three steps (emote, extend, and exercise) can lead people to practicing gratitude more consistently. Additionally, how practicing these steps consistently unlocks our neural plasticity -- our ability to make better, more advantageous neural connections. What this means is that we can "break" or do away with neural connections that exist in our minds which are limiting our abilities to believe in ourselves or keep us from feeling happy.

Instead we can create new connections! From practicing gratitude daily, you could build a neural network capable of fighting off negative thoughts and feelings by keeping yourself more grounded and in the moment.

In another Ted Talk video titled "Learning to Be Grateful Can Increase Happiness", speaker Ike Shibley continues the conversation about gratitude and how it can improve your happiness, but he makes a helpful distinction. He discusses that gratitude generates a specific type of optimism. This optimism is motivational, pushing people to achieve their goals even while facing difficult situations.

Practicing gratitude daily clearly changes individual lives positively but these individual transformations can lead to large scale changes in our communities and workplaces as well.

Gratitude Can Transform Our Communities

Katia Sol, speaks on the transformative capabilities gratitude has for individuals and how that aspect can be translated to changing our communities in the Ted Talk, "The Transformative Power of Gratitude".

She refers to gratitude as the fertilizer required to create strong cities and cultures. Gratitude can increase the sense of community in a population by cultivating love and appreciation for one another thereby unifying them.

Community Tool Box, an online resource filled with educational modules used to teach people how to build healthier communities and bring about social change also believe that gratitude and appreciation are one tool to help transform our workplaces and communities. In this module, Community Tool Box shares that most employees are looking to work for organizations that appreciate their workers and often report leaving a job because of a lack of gratitude they receive from their employers.

Additionally, they describe how a gratitude cycle can form from one person sharing their thankfulness and how that cycle causes gratitude to be extended out to other situations and people resulting in enrichment of multiple lives.

Imagine how powerful an endless cycle of gratitude could be for a community!

How Can I Practice Gratitude

As stated earlier, gratitude is really easy and simple to practice however, people are often uncertain of how to start or what the best practice is. Simply put, it's really up to you!

Most people generally end their day taking five to ten minutes to write at least three things they're grateful for. Others find it more helpful to speak the things they're grateful for while some only think about it while they're out for a walk or laying in bed.

For your workplace, you can start every meeting by going around the room and having everyone share something they're grateful for. Also, you could be sure to thank an employee or publicly recognize them when they do a good job.

Practicing gratitude is a daily activity that requires consistency, so why not start today? I encourage you to either write down, speak aloud, or just think about three things you're grateful for. I'll share what I'm grateful for too:

1. Having a home to sleep in.
2. Having warm running water.
3. Having new music to listen to from my favorite artist.

Grateful For Moving Forward

Although the concept of gratitude has been around for a long time and the videos/articles shared here were created several years ago, the implications of gratitude are not something we should over look. 2020 has been a difficult year and we face many more challenges ahead of us, but gratitude can help keep us grounded and see how far we've come in the following years. Gratitude is an easy tool we can start using today to generate happiness within ourselves and extend that joy into other people as a way to unify our divided communities and finally start moving forward.

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