Gratitude Challenge

One simple, five-minute daily practice can enhance your relationships, improve your physical health, improve your psychological health, improve your sleep, boost your self-esteem, and increase your progression toward personal goals. That practice is gratitude.

I want these things for you (and for myself) so that is why I am challenging us to practice gratitude throughout the month of September. To complete this challenge, all that you need to do is write down three things for which you feel grateful each day. (And, if you miss a day or two, give yourself self-compassion and get back on track. Missing a few days will not diminish the results of your practice.) If you are participating in Born This Way Foundation’s #BeKind21 pledge to make kindness a habit, starting a gratitude practice counts!

As I write this, the day after my three-year dating anniversary with my partner, gratitude fills me creating a perfect time to demonstrate the practice.

1. I am grateful for my partner’s generosity in the gifts that he gave to me, including several notebooks, which will be perfect for recording my gratitudes.
2. I am grateful to myself for putting aside my food and beverage fears to celebrate our anniversary with a delicious meal at a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern restaurant to which we had never been before.
3. Finally, I am grateful for the pleasant evening weather and the stunning, bright nearly full moon. (It was full the night I was writing this part of the post.)

There are many studies that show the benefits of practicing gratitude. Further, there are several easy-to-read articles summarizing these studies, such as “7 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude,” by Amy Morton, “The Health Benefits of Gratitude: 6 Scientifically Proven Ways Being Grateful Rewires Your Brain + Body for Health,” by MindValley Academy, and “The 31 Benefits of Gratitude You Didn’t Know About: How Gratitude Can Change Your Life,” by the happier human, who described that gratitude “is a massively underutilized tool for improving life satisfaction and happiness.” If you only follow one link, check out this article, by researchers Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough, summarizing a major research project on the benefits of gratitude. After looking at these and other sources, I notice that the following are the major benefits of a daily gratitude practice.

Possible Benefits of Gratitude:

Enhance Relationships

• Increase kindness in social and professional relationships

• Increase interpersonal skills

• Offer more help and/or emotional support to others

• Increase the sense of connectedness with others

• Enhance empathy

• Reduce aggression

• Increase generosity

• Reduce materialism and thus envy

Improve Physical Health

• Decrease pain

• Increase energy

• Increase exercise (among those who would benefit from increased exercise) Note: Increased exercise can be unhealthy for many people struggling with food and body issues.

• Reduce physical symptoms of poor health

• Increase alertness and attentiveness

• Increase vitality

Improve Psychological Health

• Relieve stress

• Reduce anxiety

• Ameliorate depression

• Increase happiness

• Increase optimism

• Increase enthusiasm

• Enhance the ability to accept unpleasant emotions

• Improve  moods

• Increase life-satisfaction

Improve Sleep

• Improve the quality of sleep

• Fall asleep faster

• Lengthen the duration of sleeping episodes

Boost Self-Esteem

Increase Progression Toward Personal Goals

• Increase academic achievement

• Increase interpersonal skills and relationships

• Improve health

• Increase determination

If you struggle with your relationship with food, body, or mind, you, like me, would likely benefit from most of these effects of gratitude, especially improved psychological health and self-esteem. I know that I would also benefit from increased energy and enhanced interpersonal skills.

In my post, “Recovery Self-Care,” I described a gratitude practice as being very healing for me in my recovery. Unfortunately, I have not prioritized this practice lately, and, thus, I have not consciously been considering all the people, experiences, and other things for which I am grateful. As I described in my earlier post, my goal is to record three things for which I feel grateful each day before bed. If we make an effort, we can find things for which we can feel gratitude, even on our “bad days.”

Good News

Although practicing gratitude for a month may seem like a daunting and difficult challenge, practicing gratitude gets easier over time! Dr. Maxwell Maltz, who suggested that repeating a behavior for a minimum of about 21-days helps us form habits, underestimated the average time it takes humans to form new habits. However, with patience, behavior automation is likely to happen for you. It actually takes us a range of days for us to solidify new habits–on average about 66 days. With patience, it will happen.) Further, practicing gratitude can “re-wire” our brains through chemical alteration, making it easier to keep up the practice. For example, being thankful increases the release of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that acts as a reward for positive behavior) and may sometimes even decrease the release of cortisol (the stress hormone).

If you feel comfortable, I would love for you to share your gratitudes with me and the community of readers. Post your gratitudes in the comments below, on the Body Compassion Blog’s Facebook, or on Instagram. Alternatively, share them on your own social media accounts with the hashtag, #bodycompassionchallenge. I intend to share some of mine with you all, too.