Thanks Giving all year round - a Gratitude Practice

As Thanksgiving approaches perhaps you are reflecting on all you are grateful for, or contemplating how you are going to handle back to back days with your family! For me as a non-American who has been to and hosted many ‘Foreigners and Strays’ type festivities, but never a large family Thanksgiving, it is always a time to celebrate friendship, avoid pumpkin spice in all forms, and enjoy an empty NYC!

I love hearing what people are thankful for in their lives and gratitude is something I do think a lot about. Gratitude as a norm can change our lives in profound ways. It also allows us to feel more energized, more resilient and more empowered to be able to make positive change. I think this is essential, particularly right now when we can easily feel depleted with all that is going on.

In Buddhist teachings, true awareness is being aware of the abundance in our lives. It is said that a lack of gratitude means we are not paying full attention and we are taking existence for granted.

Gratitude is celebrated throughout philosophy and religion. Now as science catches up, we are seeing studies that suggest it carries significant benefits for our mental and physical health. People practicing gratitude report fewer physical symptoms of illness, are more optimistic, and have decreased anxiety and depression.

Gratitude enhances empathy and kindness and these are habits and attitudes we can cultivate and I believe they should be cultivated, from an early age. This is something every parent and every teacher can be incorporating into the daily life of a child.

A gratitude practice is a form of self-care but the affects are much wider reaching than this. When we practice gratitude, we find that concerns slowly shift from being mostly about ourselves and those close to us, to being about all living beings.

Gratitude leads us to have more compassion and more awareness for those around us. We become sensitive to the interconnections. Every moment we are receiving a breath, that breath comes from the atmosphere we all share. The food we eat comes from the earth, the plants and the animals a gift from the planet.

Gratitude is a form of mindfulness. As we cultivate our mindfulness practice we learn to identify and be grateful for small things. We are slowing down, we are more aware, we notice more and appreciate more. The changing of the seasons, the way the light shifts during a day, a particularly interesting crack on the pavement, a smile from a stranger, an act of kindness, the warmth as you stroke your pet, the list goes on and on.

When we are aware, we are more conscious, we are grateful. We feel fully awake and in awe of the wonder around us!