What Are You Grateful For?

Recently, while in California visiting my best friend, I watched this great documentary called “Happy” (they have it on Netflix).  The narrator is Marci Shimoff, who has written a number of books on happiness, including “Happy For No Reason”, which is funny, really, because for years before I even knew about her book, I have been saying:  “I love it when I’m happy for no reason.”  To me, that’s the best kind of happiness. 

I highly recommend watching this short film to anyone that wants to be happier – and I guess that means everyone!  It is based on scientific research about the nature of happiness and what makes people happy, a field of study called positive psychology.  One of the things that’s recommended is making a list of things you are grateful for.  In a recent study, people who made a gratitude list just once a week became happier.

I understand this is nothing new, people seem to be talking about gratitude all the time lately.  And I wonder how many of them, like myself, remember about it and then forget about the practice again?  So I decided to recommit to making a gratitude list.  And, being the over-achiever that I am, I’m doing it every night instead of just once a week.

And then I remembered why I kept getting out of this good habit in the past:  when I make a daily gratitude list, I tend to keep repeating a lot of the things I list, and I lose my sincerity after a while.  You know, the usual stuff that people are grateful for:  their home, their children, the big stuff.

Maybe I’m just slow, 🙂 I don’t know.  Maybe everyone else already had this one figured out, but suddenly, I’ve discovered that if I list things that I am grateful for in the day I just lived, then it feels much more authentic to me.

If you’re interested in trying this yourself, remember that the things you list don’t have to be “big” things.  Sometimes the small, simple things make me just as happy –  or happier –  than the big things.  They can be things like “hot soup” or “the deer tracks I saw in the snow”.  Heck, last night I found myself being grateful for X-rated Valentine candies!  (I mean, really, picking a candy out of the box that seems to magically have a stamped message of my exact sentiments on it?  What more could a girl ask for?!)

Gratitude works in a number of ways.  First, it is a spiritual practice; it’s gratitude for the gifts that life provides.  No matter whether you believe in God/dess or not, you can still be grateful to life itself.  Also, it also draws more good things to you, by the Law of Attraction, which says that like attracts like.  When we focus on things we are grateful for, we get more of them.  And then there’s just the plain old fact that writing a list of gratitudes makes people happy.  (We didn’t really need research to tell us that, we kinda knew that already, huh?)  And being in the middle of winter in New England, I can use all the happiness I can get!  How about you?

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