To help children express gratitude and sensitivity toward other people’s differences, teachers and clinicians can use the Gratitude for Differences worksheet. The aim of this worksheet is to draw attention to the following: Furthermore, a meta-analysis found that positive psychology interventions (of which gratitude journaling is one) have a more significant effect on older people (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009). Therefore, the effect is smallest for children/adolescents and greatest for older adults. In our fast-paced lives, it’s easy to lose ourselves or forget about feeling grateful in our lives. These books teach us and remind us to slow down and take notice of the small things in life.

Strengthening your positive recall bias makes it easier to see the good things around you even when times are dark,” says Nancy Davis Kho, author of the book The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. Nancy set a lofty goal of writing 50 thank-you letters to people in her life and found that the practice improved her ability to weather some of life’s bigger challenges. This book consists of four essays that were published in The New York Times – one of them being the essay where he announced his illness. This is complemented by his partner’s words and photographs of the last few years of his life. A regular expression of gratitude results in numerous positive outcomes (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). In the first experimental study to investigate whether the act of expressing gratitude resulted in higher reports of psychological wellbeing, participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: We often remember to be grateful for big events, like graduating from university or getting married, but it can be more difficult to feel grateful for the small things we do every day. Reminding yourself that eating a meal, for example, is in itself special can be very powerful. Your immediate awareness of the food in front of you, combining flavors while removing hunger, is a great way to enjoy gratitude as often as you eat! Another example is feeling grateful in the morning for being able to comfortably sleep at night. We gain comfort, satisfaction and peace by practicing mindfulness and gratitude in this repeated fashion.

Final Thoughts

Christianity – Christians denote gratitude to God by stating blessings. These blessings are said in a prayer form and are created for food, family, life, and any other blessings that God may grant. Gratitude offers us a way of embracing all that makes our lives what they are. More than just a happy feeling for the parts of our lives currently going our way, gratitude encompasses the willingness to expand our attention so that we perceive more of the goodness we are always receiving. I know it sounds a little bit confusing how religion and science intertwine together in this book, yet this is a very good read to start with if curious about gratitude.

Often when we consider what we are grateful for, overt and profound life experiences, circumstances, and events come to mind. We may feel grateful for our upbringing, family, job, good health, and the opportunity to gain an education. While recognizing and being grateful for these experiences is important, our gratitude practice must also venture below the surface. Jon Kabat-Zinn has been a practitioner of meditation, yoga, and mindfulness for over 30 years. His book is not on gratitude precisely, yet it gives you what you need o practice both mindfulness and gratitude every day. I guess it might be a trivial question nowadays as we all know what gratitude is. Yet, we still need an extra explanation.Science-based– With the extensive amount of research done around gratitude at this point, many authors should be taking the time to do research. If you liked our printable activities, but still want more ideas to cultivate an attitude of gratitude, add the following prompts to your journal. As we already know, positive psychology focuses on positive thoughts and behaviors. Its constructs include optimism, hope, and, you guessed it – gratitude (Iodice et al., 2021).

Robert Emmons, psychology professor and gratitude researcher at the University of California, Davis, explains that there are two key components of practicing gratitude: See good things as “gifts.” Thinking of the good things in your life as gifts guards against taking them for granted. Try to relish and savor the gifts you’ve received.

Other findings are substantial compared to a negative control group, who documented irritations (Froh et al., 2008). New research suggests that thanking our partners for supporting us through hardship may increase their joy and satisfaction in giving. And every time I think about that moment 5 years ago, the only things I remember are the gloomy grey day and the sharp turn on the road when I decided to hit my car in a lorry that was taking that turn. This book discusses the benefits of gratitude and provides easy ways to enhance and promote gratitude every day by doing simple techniques.

Write about a time when someone expected you to be grateful, but you weren’t. What would you change? In addition to giving individual benefits, gratitude may also help to strengthen ties with friends, loved ones, and those in our wider communities. The find-remind-bind theory, first proposed by psychologist Sara Algoe—an associate professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—suggests that gratitude can help people identify good candidates for a new relationship (find), appreciate existing relationships (remind), and motivate people to maintain or invest in these relationships (bind). As Sara writes in a 2012 paper on her theory, “Gratitude starts inside one individual and its effects spread to a dyadic relationship and perhaps throughout a social network.” The Science: Stronger Connections He began his gratitude journey by setting a goal for himself: over the next year, he would write 365 thank-you notes, one per day. As he produced each handwritten note, he noticed profound changes occurring in his life. In A Simple Act of Gratitude, Kralik outlines a roadmap for anyone struggling to make similar changes in their life.Gratitude has been found to be beneficially associated with social wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, and psychological wellbeing (Jans-Beken et al., 2020). It is no surprise that trait gratitude is an important “predictor of wellbeing and other desirable life outcomes” (Portocarrero et al., 2020, p. 6). Choosing Joy and Gratitude over ingratitude... Nancy DeMoss takes you on a journey through questioning the way you approach your days. Does "not being grateful" mean we unknowingly choose "ingratitude"? Using the prompts given by Emmons and McCullough (2003), here is an example of things that I am grateful for: To demonstrate and celebrate gratitude, you