The Practice of Gratitude

i truly believe our  brains, and ourselves, have forgotten how to recognize what makes us happy.

When you know and understand the special role of each happy chemical,  life and events suddendy makes more sense; for you and for others

Our brain evolved to promote survival, not to make us feel good all the time. It saves the happy chemicals for when we need to be in survival mode

We all want to be happy and it is good to know that the choices we make can actually boost our hormones and our chemicals that are responsible for us feeling happy. Knowing how to trigger the release of dopamine and serotonin can literally make a world of difference in our life, making us feel happy from the inside.

 A grateful attitude is not only helpful—it is essential. In fact, it is precisely under difficult conditions when we have the most to gain by a grateful perspective on life, as it is the building block of happiness.

You have a choice

Processing a life experience through a grateful lens does not mean denying negativity. It is not a form of superficial happy. 

 It means realizing the power we have in transforming an obstacle into an opportunity. It means reframing a loss into a potential gain, recasting negativity into positive channels for gratitude.

 We know that by actively choosing different thoughts, we can reinforce the habit of thinking positively and decrease the habit of thinking negatively.

But, how do we flex our gratitude muscle?

 We usually show our gratitude to others when we feel indebted to them, when we have benefited from their actions, and when we want to make our feelings towards them known.

Showing gratitude is sometimes a required or expected thing, or at other times, a spontaneous “thank you” to someone who has unknowingly made our day. On most occasions, we show gratitude to bring the good feelings we have been given back to the person who gave us that good feeling .

 While it is admirable to want to share our gratitude and good feelings with others, we rarely stop to think about what giving others our gratitude does for us. As it turns out, it does quite a lot for our brains and mental well-being.

Remind yourself of the benefit of practicing gratitude that, benefits listed in the attached presentation. 

We need to teach ourselves, remind our brain to be happy again. The practice of Gratefulness is one powerful tool from your tool box that will help you regulate your emotions.

It will help you be more in the present, observant of the right here right now, balancing the fears, anxiety or negative emotions that creeps through our lives, with more positive energy and positive emotions.

This practice as well as the practice of reframing, which we will talk in more details at our next session, will set the stage for reminding to you stay in the moment, and focused on what’s good right now.

A little bit of practices

1. Take a Gratitude Break
During meetings, save a few minutes for team members to share a quick appreciation. Don’t overthink it. It can be as simple as, “I’m grateful to Sarah for making the coffee extra strong this morning,” or “Thanks to Tom for helping me organize my presentation files so I could be more efficient in front of the client.”
Avoid gratitude for things — the freshly stocked supply closet is fantastic, but really our gratitude should go to our intern Rachel, who went out of her way to make sure we got everything we needed in time.
2. Give Gifts to Share
Receiving gifts is a treat, but sharing gifts feels good, too! The act of giving has intrinsic benefits for the giver. Share the joy of gift-giving (and receiving) by providing small gifts like gift certificate to employees to give to others — as customer Thank You’s or as peer-to-peer spot recognition for a coworker. Shift supervisors, regional managers and other team leaders will appreciate having quick and easy gifts to share on the spot with employees, too. Have a stash on hand!
3. Write Little Thank You Notes
Sometimes the best gratitude comes in small doses: a little Thank You note of two or three sentences. Writing Thank You notes is a great team activity any time of year and a thoughtful way for managers to show appreciation.

or pick one of these

Happy Practice

the R-Squared Team