A Cure for Most Worries
B L Razdan
bl_razdan@yahoo.com
“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.” (Meister Eckhart) “Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.” (Samuel Johnson)
If you practice gratitude daily, no matter how much or how little you have, you will be happy. Living in gratitude is a powerful, science-backed approach that can significantly reduce stress, improve mental and physical health, and enhance relationships, effectively serving as a “tonic for tough times” and a catalyst for problem-solving. By shifting focus from what is lacking to what is present, it fosters contentment, resilience, and a more positive, optimistic, and proactive mindset.
Gratitude is an emotion akin to appreciation. The American Psychological Association (n.d.) more specifically defines this phenomenon as a sense of happiness and thankfulness in response to a fortunate happenstance or tangible gift. Gratitude is both a state and a trait (Jans-Beken et al., 2020). Better explained, one can experience gratitude for someone or something at a certain moment in time, and someone experiences gratitude more long-term as a positive character trait.
According to Dr. Robert Emmons, the feeling of gratitude involves two stages (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). First comes the acknowledgment of goodness in one’s life. In a state of gratitude, we say yes to life. We affirm that, all in all, life is good and has elements that make it worth living. The acknowledgment that we have received something gratifies us, both by its presence and by the effort the giver put into choosing it. Second, gratitude is recognizing that sources of this goodness lie outside the self. One can be grateful to our creator, other people, animals, and the world, but not to oneself. At this stage, we recognize the goodness in our lives and who to thank for it. Further, gratitude can be considered either a dispositional trait or a state of being. As a trait, an individual practices gratitude as part of their daily life (McCullough et al., 2002), and it is considered a character strength. It is important to remember that gratitude is a strength that can be enhanced with awareness and practice. When a person experiences the emotion from someone expressing gratitude for them, it is referred to as a state (Watkins et al., 2009).
The new science of happiness starts with a simple insight: we’re never satisfied. “We always think if we just had a little bit more money, we’d be happier,” says Catherine Sanderson, a psychology professor at Amherst College, “but when we get there, we’re not.” Indeed, the more you make, the more you want. The more you have, the less effective it is at bringing you joy, and that seeming paradox has long bedevilled economists. “Once you get basic human needs met, a lot more money doesn’t make a lot more happiness,” notes Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University and the author of Stumbling on Happiness. Some research shows that going from earning less than $20,000 a year to making more than $50,000 makes you twice as likely to be happy, yet the payoff for then surpassing $90,000 is slight. And while the rich are happier than the poor, the enormous rise in living standards over the past 50 years hasn’t made people happier. The reasons: the law of diminishing returns.
We overestimate how much pleasure we shall get from having more. Humans are adaptable creatures, which has been a plus during assorted ice ages, plagues and wars. But that’s also why we are never all that satisfied for long when good fortune comes our way. While earning more makes us happy in the short term, we quickly adjust to our new wealth – and everything it buys us. Yes, we get a thrill at first from shiny new cars and TV screens the size of Picasso’s Guernica. But we soon get used to them, a state of running in place that economists call the “hedonic treadmill” or “hedonic adaptation.”
On the other hand, if we count our blessings and feel truly grateful for what we have and express genuine gratitude for it, our happiness will last much longer and may be it may become a habit with us. Expressing gratitude can lead to significant increases in subjective, psychological, spiritual, and physical well-being; the benefits of expressing gratitude are many. ‘Gratitude’ is a multi-layered, complex concept with multiple definitions. It can be regarded at many levels of analysis ranging from momentary effect to long-term dispositions (McCullough, 2004), as a general state of thankfulness and/or appreciation (Sansone & Sansone, 2010), and as the recognition and appreciation of an altruistic gift (Emmons, 2004). There is a wealth of evidence reflecting on the benefits we derive from expressing gratitude and appreciation; such expressions evoke an array of psychological, social, and physical benefits that promote our psychological, social and physiological health (Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010).
Hill, Allemand, and Roberts (2013) postulated that grateful individuals are better able to form social bonds, utilize coping skills to defer stress, maintain positive affect, and are more creative in problem solving. Bartlett, Condon, Cruz, Baumann, and Desteno (2012) suggested gratitude is related to increases in relationship satisfaction, social affiliation, and facilitates socially inclusive behaviours, even when those actions come at a personal cost to oneself.
Daily habits of intentionally recognizing and feeling gratitude are one of the highest emotional and vibrational states we can experience. When we cultivate gratitude, we are able to feel true joy and peace, no matter what we currently have or don’t have in our life. For those who understand how to use this power and practice it daily, they are able to attract more things into their lives to be thankful for.
If we are already grateful for something before it appears, then we are essentially vibrating at the same frequency as that which we want. We have a very powerful energy force that lies within us. Some call it a soul, our spirit, or our higher self. Science has proven that we are created out of energy. This energy vibrates so fast that it manifests in a physical form, our body. Our emotions are the energy that amplifies our thoughts. Our thoughts signal to the Universe, God, the Collective Consciousness, call it whatever we may like, what it is that we desire to create and have manifest into our reality. As we learn to increase our vibration energy and raise the frequency to that of love, peace and joy, the Universe will send that vibration match, the same energy that we are vibrating on, back into our life through people, places and circumstances that resonate with those same thoughts and feelings.
What we desire may not be here yet in the material sense, but it is there in the energy field within our world and the Universe. The more we make an effort to see the positive side in every situation, the more positive aspects we’ll notice. Not only do we recognize more of the good stuff, we’ll actually begin to attract it. Like attracts like! The more grateful we are for what we already have, the more good things we will attract to be grateful about. The more positive we are the more positive people we will attract. The more appreciative we feel about money, the more money you will attract. The key is to visualize how that relationship will feel or how that money will give us freedom. Focus on the feeling, the energy, not the object we want to hold. We desire things in life because of how they make us feel. When we receive what we manifested into our life, be grateful for it and more of that abundance will continue to come to us. Even a simple smile from a stranger matters. If we vibrate in gratitude for a simple smile, then think about the intensity of the energy we can emanate when the big things occur!
Nothing turns us into bitter, selfish, dissatisfied people more quickly than an ungrateful heart; and nothing will do more to restore contentment and the joy of our salvation than a true spirit of thankfulness. “Learn to be thankful for what you already have, while you pursue all that you want.” (Jim Rohn)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
