Gratitude is a state of thankfulness that involves appreciating what you have in life. Even in the worst times, there is something to be grateful for; a good friend, a pet, your health, a job you enjoy. It’s easy to get bogged down by what’s going wrong, but acknowledging the good can make you happier and increase your positive energy.
Research shows that focusing on what you’re grateful for can make you more optimistic and satisfied with your life. There are many ways to practice gratitude, but a popular way is through gratitude meditation. Gratitude meditations work by combining a happiness-boosting strategy with mindfulness.
Let’s go deeper into gratitude meditation, how it acts as a mindfulness practice, and its benefits.
What is a Gratitude Meditation?
To understand what gratitude meditation is, you should first know what gratitude is on its own. Gratitude derives from the Latin word gratia, meaning thankfulness. This is the ability to show appreciation for everything in your life.
When someone does a nice gesture or gifts you something you didn’t expect, the joy you feel at that moment is considered gratitude. Those same positive emotions are what you should feel towards everything that life grants you.
Gratitude meditation is indicated in the name—it’s the type of meditation calling you to be appreciative. This meditation practice is used to reflect on what you are grateful for in your life. People are grateful for some common things: their family and friends, jobs, and food.
You can use your gratitude meditation to focus on any little thing you appreciate; be it a warm, sunny day at the end of winter; meeting up with family and loved ones after a long day; the smell of a flower nearby; or the sensation of the wind in your hair. You can find something to be grateful for in every moment. Some practitioners even devote their gratitude to hardships.
Showing Gratitude Towards Everything
When you practice gratitude, it doesn’t only concern the things and people that you love and care for. It’s important to acknowledge and show appreciation towards everything life gives you, good or bad. It may sound absurd to appreciate things that don’t make you happy, but these things are all a part of the necessary lessons for growth.
People may consider recognizing the good in everything life gives you as one of the most difficult things about starting gratitude meditation. The great thing is that with consistency in your practice, seeing the good in the bad becomes easier.
Another thing about gratitude meditation is that it doesn’t require you only to appreciate the things you can see or that are big. You can be thankful for small things like being able to taste, smell, or anything else that is not tangible.
Why choose gratitude meditation?
There are many types of meditation techniques to choose from. Meditation is a practice that helps you to become one with the mind, body, and spirit—releasing negative thoughts and emotions.
When meditating, it’s important to choose an area that is free from distractions and quiet enough for you to remain focused. You want to make sure the environment around you is conducive to relaxation. With gratitude meditation, you can meditate from anywhere, at any time. Some people meditate in the car headed to work or while waiting for their food to finish cooking. This type of meditation works by focusing on what you are being grateful for.
While focusing on the things you are grateful for, gratitude meditation warrants you to take note of your feelings towards them. You can speak things out or keep them in your mind. Studies show that gratitude meditation is also one of the most effective kinds of meditation, and with consistent practice, you can experience long-lasting effects.
Benefits of Gratitude Meditation
When practicing gratitude, you focus on what you are thankful for while doing your regular meditation. According to research, people who habitually engage in gratitude can experience several benefits, such as:
More happiness
Have you ever met someone that just seemed to have positive vibes radiating from them? Well, they might have adopted a gratitude practice. Feeling gratitude toward things in your own life can extend to sympathetic joy.
Studies reflect that showing gratitude can consistently increase your happiness. When you have an attitude of gratitude, you can see things from a positive perspective throughout the day. This helps increase your overall happiness. Gratitude helps you feel more content, decreasing depressive thoughts about yourself or your living circumstances.
Improved mental health
Getting caught up in the loop of stress and anxiety is normal for some people. It may be difficult to form thoughts that are not negative. Incorporating a gratitude practice in your daily life helps break the cycle of negative thoughts, by including positive things you should be thankful for. This also equips you to handle things in the future that may negatively impact your mental health.
Stronger personal relationships
Gratitude meditation can strengthen marriages, friendships, and even relationships with colleagues at your place of work. You’re more likely to have a strong bond with people when you show them you appreciate them and don’t take the relationship for granted. This also helps prevent future problems and miscommunication.
Increased sleep quality
One study showed that over 400 adults, 40% with sleeping problems, saw a major improvement in their standard of sleep. These people went to sleep fast and stayed sleeping for a longer period. Most adults suffer from conditions like insomnia or sleep deprivation due to mental health issues like stress and anxiety.
Fewer Physical Health Problems
When you are grateful for life and see things from a content perspective, you form the habit of taking care of yourself more. In this state of mind, you tend to exercise, eat healthier foods, get more sleep, and do everything you can to feel at your best.
Positive Outlook on Life
Practicing gratitude makes you more optimistic about things. This also includes being able to take on adversity better. Studies show that practicing gratitude leaves long-lasting effects on positivity. Gratitude, in a sense, rewires the brain so that you look at things from a different perspective down the road.
Because this meditation improves your overall mood and mindset about life while helping decrease mental health problems, you can receive better rest.
How Are Gratitude and Mindfulness Related?
There is some relationship between gratitude and mindful awareness. To fully understand this, let’s take a deeper look into what mindfulness is:
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a human ability to be aware of where you are and fully present. When you are mindful, you aren’t consumed by the world around you. Instead, mindfulness moves you to focus on the present moment only.
During mindfulness, you should practice being judge free. If you are doing guided mindfulness meditation, your guide understands that different thoughts will come to you as you’re meditating. They often encourage you to accept these thoughts and take note of your feelings towards them. You should do this same thing whenever you are meditating. As humans, it’s normal for the mind to wander during meditation—as long as you can bring yourself back to focus.
Gratitude and Mindfulness Together
Gratitude and mindfulness go hand-in-hand. Gratitude helps you focus on the positives in your life, and mindfulness allows you to accept where you are in that moment. Mindfulness and gratitude interventions led to similar well-being and overall happiness benefits. This is why some psychologists refer to gratitude as the “sister” of mindfulness.
Across many religious practices, people practice mindfulness when they are moved to think about the good things in life, exercise faith in their beliefs, and trust their current circumstances without focusing on the future—that is what mindfulness is all about.
Gratitude itself has been an important aspect of Buddhist and Native American culture. You can also see gratitude and contentment practiced in other religious and spiritual movements. Both of these practices have a cultural significance. While they are not interchangeable, they share similar aspects of human psychology. Pairing gratitude with mindfulness can have high positive effects.
Keeping a Gratitude Journal
Journaling is one of the most common self-improvement habits that people form. Journaling has become a way to express emotions and feelings. While it’s used to relieve stress, worry, or anxiety, people also use it to express happiness in their lives, set goals, build confidence, and more.
At the beginning of the year, millions of people worldwide write their New Year’s Resolution to change their life. For many people, writing down their goals for the year solidifies their plans and helps them seem more real. This same mindset applies to gratitude journaling. This is a great alternative to keeping things in your head and possibly forgetting about them.
So many benefits come with journaling, but adding gratitude to that practice can take things to a new level. Using a gratitude journal is easy to keep notes of the things you appreciate throughout the day. You can keep this journal and look back at it whenever you need a mood booster or a pick-me-up.
The two most common benefits of gratitude journaling are:
Increased positivity
Taking time to appreciate the good things in your life can inadvertently lead to being happier. Writing down these things can make them more concrete. After journaling your gratitude, you may find yourself going back to read it at times when you are meditating. Journaling can help you improve your consistency with a gratitude meditation. Seeing things visually may encourage you to continue your daily practice, so you can continue to see improvement.
Improved self-esteem
Taking time out of your day to practice gratitude meditation is a great personal activity. As time goes on, it’ll affect your self-esteem and self-compassion. Gratitude doesn’t only call for thanking the people around you but also yourself.
When you take time to list the things you appreciate about your life, you start to lessen the social comparisons you place on yourself. Practicing gratitude increases your self-confidence. You may also notice less resentment towards people who may have offended you in the past or even enemies.
How to do Gratitude Meditation
There are various ways to do gratitude meditation. First, understand that what you do during your guided meditation is entirely up to you. This is your time to show appreciation for the things in your life that make you happy, and not every person will be able to understand that joy the way you do.
Meditations on gratitude don’t have a time requirement like other meditation practices. It may not take much time to start feeling grateful about things once you bring your attention to your gratitude meditation practice.
Here are a few steps to starting your daily gratitude meditation practice:
- Find a comfortable place to meditate that is free from distractions
- Use a guided meditation to direct your thoughts and attention to being grateful
- Take a deep breath as you start to engage in meditation
- Free your mind from negative thoughts to cultivate gratitude
- List the things you are grateful for and take note of your feelings at that moment
Gratitude Meditations on BetterSleep
Finding the perfect guided meditation for gratitude may be a lot of work for people who don’t know where to start. For beginners, guided meditation makes it easier to start meditating. an excellent guided meditation consists of someone walking you through the process of meditation. They usually help with things like when and how to breathe and to direct your thoughts. Your guide will be responsible for coming up with mantras and things that will benefit you during meditation.
BetterSleep has several guided meditations to help you establish a regular practice. Try adding a “gratitude check-in” to your bedtime routine, followed by a meditation. Before beginning the meditation, think about one or two things from your day that you appreciate and are thankful for. Hold on to that feeling of gratitude during your meditation.
In addition to gratitude meditations, try the many mindfulness meditations on the BetterSleep app. These can help you focus on the here and now while appreciating what you feel, hear, and smell as you drift off to sleep.
Morning meditations focusing on gratitude can set the tone for a great day. Try the Energized Morning or Morning Affirmation guided meditations. Acknowledge what you are thankful for as you prepare for the day ahead.
The more you focus on gratitude, the better you’ll feel. Mindfulness and guided gratitude meditation are great tools for helping you make gratitude a daily practice.
