How to Be More Thankful
Cultivating Positive Relationships 008: with Matt Samocki, Executive Director of the National Network of Depression Centers
How to express and experience more thankfulness in your life
Thankfulness—which might also be referred to as gratitude or appreciation—is a positive, other-focused emotion (Emmons & McCullough, 2004). It generally involves positive feelings about another person’s actions, but it might just be for the other person’s existence—e.g., I’m just thankful to have you!
Thankfulness may just be one of the best things we can do to improve both personal well-being and our relationships. Both expressing and experiencing thankfulness are linked with happiness and other positive outcomes (Bono, Emmons, & McCullough, 2004). So, the more often and intensely we feel thankfulness, the better.
Expressing my thanks comes easy to me, however, accepting gratitude is much harder for me. For example, I am thankful for many things in my personal and professional life and I would like to take the time now to reflect and be thankful. I thankful for everyone who supported the Great Lakes Bay Region Mental Health Partnership over the last 5 years; the Partnerships future is bright because of you. I am also thankful to the National Network of Depression Centers (NNDC) for recently hiring me as their executive director. The team and members of the Network will continue to have a tremendous impact for years to come. I am thankful to my family for their unconditional love and support. I am thankful for my colleagues, friends, and for everyone who has supported me in good times and in bad.
In terms of accepting thanks, I will dedicate myself in 2024 to truly experiencing and appreciating it when someone expresses gratitude towards me. My default reaction is to take someone’s compliment or appreciation and give others credit because that is most comfortable for me. However, to truly practice self-care, sincerely taking gratitude that someone else offers will not only be good for my own health, but it also helps the individual who is giving their gratitude to understand that I truly appreciate them taking the time to offer appreciation. In summary, to truly practice thankfulness requires a two-way street of both actively giving and actively accepting gratitude and appreciation if we are to fully experience personal well-being and improved relationships.
Benefits of Being Thankful
Importantly, cultivating gratitude appears to result not only in short-term benefits but in some sustained improvements in well-being over time (Davis et al., 2016). So here are a few phrases you can use when trying to be more thankful:
● ”I appreciate you.”
● “I am grateful for this opportunity.”
● “I just wanted to say thanks for ________.”
● “You’re great!”
● “I’m so lucky to have you.”
● “You make my life better.”
● “I appreciate you doing _______.”
● “I appreciate you being _______.”
Also, here are a few phrases to accept gratitude from others:
● “Thank you so much!”
● “I appreciate your compliment”
● “That’s so kind of you to say ______”
● “Thank you for taking the time to share this with me”
● “Your support means the world.”
● “Your opinion means so much.”
● “I’m blown away by your kindness.”
● “It means the world to me.”
In Sum
Taking a few minutes each day to be thankful and accepting gratitude can be an easy and effective way to boost your mood and strengthen your relationships. Hopefully, this article was a good jumping-off point to inspire you and get you started.
References
● Bono, G., Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2004). Gratitude in practice and the practice of gratitude. Positive psychology in practice, 464-481.
● Davis, D. E., Choe, E., Meyers, J., Wade, N., Varjas, K., Gifford, A., ... & Worthington Jr, E. L. (2016). Thankful for the little things: A meta-analysis of gratitude interventions. Journal of counseling psychology, 63(1), 20.
● Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (Eds.). (2004). The psychology of gratitude. Oxford University Press.
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