Practicing gratitude is often cited as a way to be happier.

But if you’re like many of my patients, practicing gratitude doesn’t come easily.

When you ask yourself “what am I grateful for,” do you sometimes come up empty? Or maybe you don’t try at all because a gratitude practice seems too woo woo. I get it, that’s your brain throwing up obstacles. But I’m here to tell you that gratitude IS necessary for happiness. (Read more about the research on happiness and gratitude here.)

Luckily it doesn’t mean that if you’re weak on gratitude, you can’t be happy. But you will have to shove aside fear in order to get to gratitude. Fear makes gratitude impossible. If you’re fearful, then you’re primed to focus on what’s wrong, what’s not working, what’s lacking, and what’s not gratitude worthy.

Practicing gratitude means letting go of worrying, fixing, planning, blaming, and controlling – just a few of the many forms of fear. Fear and gratitude cannot coexist. Fear tells you to beware of appreciation because it’s an indulgence you can’t afford, so no wonder it’s hard to feel grateful. No wonder people can’t be happy just by being told to feel grateful.

In order to feel grateful, you must first make space within you. Not out there in the world, but deep inside yourself. Here are some simple strategies to make small physical changes to create that necessary space.

Get yourself out of your fear posture.

Straighten your spine and sit or stand upright. Gently move your shoulders back, shift your heart forward, and hold your head high, allowing the tips of your lips to gently go up. This is how to lead with Heart (the French word for heart is coeur for courage).

Now ask yourself what you love.

In this posture, ask yourself what you love – not what you’re grateful for. What do you really love? Bring into view whoever or whatever you love. Not who or what you should love, but who or what you do love.

It could be a person (that could include yourself), a blanket, an animal, a place (and your bed counts :)), an experience, a memory, your health, a song or your beating heart (because you’re alive!). Love and gratitude can coexist—in fact they always do.

Once you start thinking about love, you’re moving towards appreciation and bypassing the negativity bias of brain. Now you can start to understand gratitude.

I’m not telling you anything new; you know this intuitively. I’m just helping you get there more efficiently.

Heartfelt wishes,
Amy

Photo credit: Samantha Gades for Unsplash