Feeling that you don’t have enough?

How gratitude helps you to shift your focus from things that are stressful to becoming more satisfied and content with what you have.

Studies over the last 20 years or so have shown that have shown that gratitude has numerous benefits to our wellbeing, relieving stress, reducing anxiety and depression, supporting heart health and improving sleep.

By acknowledging the good things in your life, gratitude helps you to shift your focus from things that are stressful to becoming more satisfied and content with what you have.

Our brains have a negativity bias: we’re naturally wired to look out for danger, that’s what our autonomic nervous system does, it’s job is to protect us, whether the stressors or dangers are physical or emotional.

Practicing gratitude is the perfect antidote to this reponse! In classical yoga, the practice of contentment or santosha is one of the 5 niyamas, or self observances that cultivate inner growth and awareness.

The following practices take a few minutes and can be seamlessly included in your daily routines.

Morning practice: 3 questions: Make it a little ritual with your coffee:

1. What am I most grateful for today?

2. What quality would l like to bring into the world today? (some suggestions to start with are contentment, curiosity, compassion)

3. What is the most important thing I have to do today? (This is the hard one!)

Evening before bed practice:

1. Write a 3-4 minute ‘brain dump’: anything that’s been bothering you in the day that you haven’t had time to give proper attention to, or any unfinished tasks. Just get them onto paper, they don’t have to be perfect or well written.

2. Write down one thing that went well.

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Sources, Reviews and Studies

Inspirational Sources:

Morning journalling - Rangan Chaterjee - Podcast

Evening Journalling - Lisa Sanfilippo - Sleep Recovery

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Reviews & Studies:

Gratitude and Well Being - The Benefits of Appreciation - (Sansone,Sansone 2010)

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The Catalyst model of Change: Gratitude interventions with Positive long term effects (Y. Joel Wong 2023)