Thanksgiving vs Gratitude

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice." Meister Eckhart

Thanksgiving Day, celebrated primarily in Canada and the United States, is traditionally a religious ceremony. It is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general.

In the US, it is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. Australia celebrated a 'National Day of Thanksgiving' on 30th May 2009.

Literally, Thanksgiving is a day dedicated to thanking others. Today, gratitude is a highly undervalued and underdeveloped virtue. So rather than dedicate one day a year to being grateful for our lives and everything in it, practising to be grateful every day is something that will make a BIG difference to our health, wealth and well being.

Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California at Davis has done extensive research on gratitude and happiness. Here are some of his findings:

• Those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared with those who recorded hassles or neutral life events.

• Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared with subjects in the other experimental conditions.

• A daily gratitude intervention (self-guided exercises) with young adults resulted in higher reported levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy.

• Participants in the daily gratitude condition were more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or having offered emotional support to another, relative to the hassles or social comparison condition.

Emmons' research shows that daily gratitude exercises resulted in higher reported levels of optimism, alertness, energy, enthusiasm and determination.

So, get yourself a journal or notebook and start your gratefulness journey by -

1. Consider for what you feel grateful over the past year. Name 10 things as you finish the sentence, "I feel grateful for ....."
2. Think about the people who have helped you get to this point in your life. Who has helped, loved, and supported you? Send them a wish of thanks, either in your Gratitude Journal or by expressing your appreciation directly to them.

Gratitude also helps us to expand beyond judgment and restriction. When we approach the experiences of our life with a sense of gratitude, it becomes much easier for us to see every experience as an opportunity for growth and transformation rather than a burden.

It is impossible to be a victim when we are grateful for what we have been given.