Active Gratitude

Do you have gratitude habits you practice regularly? Try doing an internet search and you'll find loads of experts reporting that practicing gratitude will make you happier, bring you closer to others, help you sleep better, and improve your immune system. You'll take fewer things for granted. You'll notice the details that can make your life more exciting.

I've been doing gratitude journals and practices for a long time. And despite keeping a daily gratitude journal, I wondered: how is this impacting my life today? Tomorrow? Am I happier? Do I feel closer to the people I love, my neighbors, my colleagues? Something was missing.

And then my therapist introduced me to active gratitude, which I'll explain using her example (and I'm paraphrasing here): since lock down, I am thankful for all this time at home that I can spend with my children, and to act on this gratitude, I'm going to actually engage with them when I can. We'll make a meal together or play a board game. If I just say I'm thankful for this time and then do nothing with it, I'm squandering the opportunity to build emotional connections within my gratitude practice and, frankly, with my children.

Creating experiences connected to your thankfulness is active gratitude. It would be inaccurate to say that there is only one way to do this. Again, any search result will yield tons of articles about engaging a partner in conversation, making lists, joining groups, volunteering. It would also be inaccurate to say that one must always practice active gratitude in every situation, every day.

What appeals to me-- and what was lacking before-- is the emotional rootedness that active gratitude provides. It connects my thought (I am thankful for this thing/person/opportunity) to my daily practice of self-reflection, self-forgiveness, and self-love. Because I can make lists all day, yo! I love lists! But after I write something down and even after I reflect on it for a few moments or a few days, then what?

To me, it's like making compost. Making compost out of your daily refuse is a good thing, right? You don't waste unnecessarily and you reduce the amount of trash you produce. But isn't it far more useful if you then used that compost to feed your plants? You can either end up surrounded by mounds and mounds of compost or you can fertilize the seeds you've planted.

Here's one of my recent examples of active gratitude. A couple of weeks ago I bought myself a new set of fineliner markers. I was really hesitant to buy them because not only were they expensive, I already owned half the colors in this set. After I brought this purchase home, I wrote in my journal that I was thankful because 1) I splurged on myself (which is a difficult thing for me to do), 2) I now had pretty new colors to play with 3) I gave Lucy the colors I already owned, so she got some new toys, too. Then, the really important part emerged: I used my pens to journal, doodle, and create greeting cards that I then mailed to friends and family.

The experiences I created with those pens has enriched my daily journaling and has touched the lives of those I sent cards to. Even if those cards go unnoticed by their recipients, I enjoyed making and sending them. This process was rooted in the thoughts I love you, you are important to me, and I wish you well. I found joy in this act of thankfulness, and it's that joy that will reinforce a daily active gratitude practice.