How would you like to:
- Manage stress by reducing levels of stress hormones.
- Produce higher number of blood cells that protect the immune system.
- Have better quality and duration of sleep.
- Feel greater optimism about coming days and immediate week.
- Make more progress towards important personal goals.
- Have higher states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness, and energy. (Still experience unpleasant emotions, but a lot less impact.)
- Feel more likely to help others who have problems or need emotional support.
- Have greater optimism and enjoyment in life.
- Be less susceptible to depression, anxiety, anger and other destructive emotions.
I compiled the above list from worldwide research results on gratitude. Unequivocally, feeling grateful produces a happier brain, mind, and body. Now this doesn’t mean that you spend your day saying “thank you” to everyone you meet. It does mean, however, that you take time to notice, acknowledge, and feel grateful for the small gifts that life brings your way.
Because this is a blog about meditation, let’s first focus on meditation. Right now, as I type this to you, I feel a deep gratitude for the amazing gifts I have received from 20 years of meditating. Now, this doesn’t mean that I’ve liked all my meditations. Just the opposite – sometimes, I’ve hated it. I have had, however, life-changing experiences and significant health benefits.
No matter how difficult a meditation has been for me, I’ve always found something to hold with gratitude at the end of my sitting. On tough days, it could be as simple as feeling blessed that I still have the ability to breath, or that I didn’t leave in the middle out of frustration. On good days, I’m grateful for feeling peace, an integrated mind and body, and a heart that opens in joy.
It takes but a moment at the end of your meditation to express gratitude for something positive – and if you look, you will always find hidden blessings.
A non-meditation way that I practice gratitude happens just after I turn the light out at night. Silently to myself, I list three things that happened during the day for which I feel grateful such as: I had clean water to drink, had a great phone conversation with my mother, and received help with a presentation I was working on. Nothing major, and yet, the mind and body quickly relaxes for sleep. Whatever I had been worrying about gets put on the shelf until I take it down the next morning.
As you can see, having a simple gratitude practice requires just a brief moment of your time, plus mindfulness of what’s happening within and around you; in return, you receive huge benefits to your health and well-being.
