More on Grateful Living

Most of the research on gratitude has focused on how simple strategies (like keeping a gratitude journal) can boost a person's happiness. However, it might be best to view these practices as the first steps toward cultivating a grateful mindset in which we train ourselves to more frequently notice and appreciate the good in our lives. This in turn has positive consequences beyond our own personal well-being.

Psychologists refer to this as dispositional gratitude (McCullough, 2002), and they define it as a “grateful disposition as a generalized tendency to recognize and respond with grateful emotion to the roles of other people’s benevolence in the positive experiences and outcomes that one obtains” (p. 112), and as a “tendency to noticing and appreciating the positive in the world” (Wood, 2012, p. 891). Generally speaking, research suggests that this dispositional gratitude has a positive effect on well-being as a whole (Portocarrero, 2020). So, dispositional gratitude is essentially a way of responding to things in our lives with appreciation.

Dr. Tal Ben Shahar, author and positive psychologist, emphasizes that the word "appreciate" has two meanings: to be grateful for something, and to increase in value. When we appreciate the good in our lives, the good appreciates--it increases in value.

A good example of this is how gratitude works in our relationships. First, think of a time when you felt unappreciated in a relationship (whether at work, at home, in a friendship, or elsewhere). Did that experience motivate you to be your best for the other person—to extend yourself further or give more of yourself? In contrast, consider what it’s like to feel completely seen and appreciated by someone. When you feel that deep appreciation from another person, don’t you feel eager to reciprocate, willing to go above and beyond for that person? Cultivating the habit of sincere gratitude in our relationships brings out the best in those around us, increasing the value of those relationships and benefitting everyone in the process.  

Brother David Steindl-Rast, monk and interfaith scholar, says “Grateful living, that is the thing. It happens by experience, by becoming aware that every moment is a given moment; you haven’t earned it or brought it about in any way... and yet it’s the most valuable thing that can be given to you. If you didn’t have this present moment, you wouldn’t have any opportunity to do anything or experience anything. And this moment is a gift. The gift is really the opportunity, not the thing that is given to you. Opportunity is the gift within every gift.”