Optimism, Key 5: Gratitude

[Excerpted from, 9 Keys to Optimism: Positive Psychology , ?2023]

Along with ‘stay curious’, we could add: ‘be grateful’.

Gratitude is surely on the public radar of late. Along with kindness, gratitude as a means to health began trending several years ago, when we began to more clearly understand through research that it directly contributes to our wellbeing. It’s in being grateful for our lives, in many aspects and in spite of specific circumstances, that we expand our openness to new experience, our ability to love and be loved, our creative capacity, and thus, our optimism.

Yes, grateful, ‘in spite of’. Even when facing challenges, or grieving a loss, there are aspects of our lives and our world for which we can experience gratitude, each and every day.

At this moment, I’m flooded with gratitude that the sky, outside the window before me as I write, is a robin-egg blue, while early spring sunshine streams across my desk. It is enough.

This character strength is another located within the virtue of transcendence, as the feeling of thankfulness itself is transcendent beyond the self and the ordinary. By feeling grateful for all that we have – for sunshine, a good friend, a favorite food, a skill, or the simple yet profound fact that we woke to yet another day (and for sleep itself, and for dreams), and so much more – that we become our best selves. We know our lives to have meaning and purpose. In short, we feel connected -- to everyone and everything.

Gratitude can be thought of 2 ways, as specific thankfulness for some benefit – a kindness or favor done for you by someone, for example – and as a generalized emotion by which we live. One has a clear stimulus, while the other is more intangible, and both benefit our physical and mental health and wellbeing, as well as our enjoyment of life.

Its health benefits, physical and psychological, are enormous, often overlapping with those of optimism. A recent study by Newman et al. (2021) demonstrated that both gratitude and optimism were predictors for lower heart rate and blood pressure, or better cardiovascular health; they both improved sleep and reduced stress response; both produced feelings of positive emotion and life satisfaction. They differed, too, in that optimism contributed more to sleep quality, decreased stress, and reduced discomfort when considering negative events, whereas gratitude contributed more to wellbeing aspects such as recall of positive events and appreciation of others, or love.

Gratitude is a clear predictor of optimism, as well as self-esteem and resilience; the more gratitude one integrates into one’s life, the greater the optimism (Daniel-González et al., 2023). Along with perceived social support, gratitude also predicts wellbeing and optimism among the very old, as demonstrated in a geriatric nursing facility study conducted by Liu et al. (2022). And in a clear indication of their power, a study by Kumar et al. (2022) indicated gratitude and optimism as contributors to resilience in young adult survivors of sexual violence; posttraumatic stress and suicidal ideation were lower for those in whom gratitude and optimism were high.

Gratitude, hope, and optimism have been identified as predictors of our life satisfaction (Kardas et al., 2019), none of which were directly related to acquisition or capability (though we can surely be grateful for these things as well). The relationship of optimism with life satisfaction is continually mediated by gratitude as well as a sense of meaning in one’s life (Oriol et al., 2020); that is to say, optimism by itself isn’t always sufficient for life satisfaction, but the two are generally bridged by our gratitude and our sense that life has purpose.

And how can we bolster our character strength of gratitude?

This goes hand-in-hand with mindfulness, to be discussed. When we pay careful attention to the details of our lives, and our day, we begin to notice many opportunities for gratitude. The simpler, the better; this isn’t “I’m grateful to have won the lottery” or to have been born rich; surely, gratitude for such good fortune is appropriate, but when we speak of gratitude in psychological terms, it’s a state of mind. We’re grateful for all the simple benefits, and moments of joy and beauty, and supportive individuals, in our lives. We’re grateful for sunshine, for the affection of our dog or cat, for springtime flowers, for a cool breeze, for how good it feels to stretch our bodies after sitting too long, for waking up in the morning and for having rested well.

And we let people know. We share with others that we’re grateful for them, for something they’ve done to help us, for their presence in our lives, for their love. We share with them, too, other things that we’re grateful for; sharing our gratitude expands the experience of it.

We can even be grateful for the negatives at times. In the 1980s in New York, the AIDS epidemic had just arrived and many young men I knew were dying, a profoundly tragic time. A young adult myself, I immersed myself in this work both professionally and in activism, and I encountered quite a few who were living with AIDS -- making enormous life changes for the better in terms of health practices, self-care, self-compassion, deepening relationships, and a sense of meaning and purpose – and many a time, I heard someone express gratitude for their diagnosis and the ways that it had changed their life for the better.

Each day provides countless opportunities for gratitude.

Exercises:

The classic activity is to keep a gratitude journal, one in which we write about all for which we’re grateful. We can adapt this to a brainstorming version, in which we begin with ‘gratitude’ in the center of a sheet of paper and then fill that page with every possible word or phrase that enters our mind – or use the mind-mapping technique in which we draw lines, connections, conclusions between and among those words and phrases.

We can also set the tone for the day, by identifying 3 such points of gratitude upon waking each morning, and 3 more before going to sleep at night. (Throw in another 3 as a midday break, for a complete set.)

Consider the past, too – there’s so much material there. Not all of it was positive, to be sure. But we can find plenty to fill us with gratitude. Think back to when you were 5 years old or so, going to school for the first time. Consider your parents giving you chores, which taught you how to manage your own life. Recall people, now gone, for whose presence in your life you remain eternally grateful. Think about delicious vacations you’ve taken, destinations you’ve visited. Remember the time you splashed in mud puddles, and danced in the rain.

A useful relationship exercise is to sit facing one another, and each tell the other what we’re grateful for in them, alternating, each making one such statement at a time. This can be done between family members or close friends, too.

Consider sending just one message of gratitude per day, each day to a different person, rotating among your contacts of family and friends. You can even find or make a meme – “Today, I’m grateful for you” – and just send it to a different person each day. Be sure to feel the gratitude when you send it, rather than it becoming a rote exercise; think about that person first, and what you’re grateful for.

Take a walk in nature, and let your gratitude for what you see, hear, and feel flow from you out into the atmosphere. Identify as you walk all that you’re grateful for: the trees, the cool breeze, the sunshine on your face, the birdsong, the color green, those pesky seagulls.

We can be grateful for surprising things.

9 Keys to Optimism: Positive Psychology, by Anne Hilty, ?2023

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References:

Daniel-González L, Moral-de la Rubia J, Valle-de la O A,?et al.?(2023). A predictive model of happiness among medical students.?Current Psychology?42, 955–966. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01485-1

Kardas F, Cam Z, Eskisu M, et al. (2019). Gratitude, Hope, Optimism and Life Satisfaction as Predictors of Psychological Well-Being. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research 19:82, 81-100. Retrieved at: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/ejer/issue/48089/608137

Kumar SA, Jaffe AE, Brock RL, et al. (2022). Resilience to suicidal ideation among college sexual assault survivors: The protective role of optimism and gratitude in the context of posttraumatic stress.?Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 14:S1, S91–S100.?https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001141

Liu C, Luo D, Zhou Y, et al. (2022). Optimism and subjective well-being in nursing home older adults: The mediating roles of gratitude and social support.?Geriatric Nursing,?47, 232-238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gerinurse.2022.07.020

Newman DB, Gordon AM, and Mendes WB (2021). Comparing daily physiological and psychological benefits of gratitude and optimism using a digital platform.?Emotion, 21:7, 1357–1365.?https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001025