By Dr. Robert Emmons
1. Keep a Gratitude Journal.
Establish a daily practice in which you remind yourself of the gifts, grace,
benefits, and good things you enjoy. Setting aside time on a daily basis to
recall moments of gratitude associated with ordinary events, your personal
attributes, or valued people in your life gives you the potential to interweave
a sustainable life theme of gratefulness.
2. Remember the Bad.
To be grateful in your current state, it is helpful to remember the hard times
that you once experienced. When you remember how difficult life used to be and
how far you have come, you set up an explicit contrast in your mind, and this
contrast is fertile ground for gratefulness.
3. Ask Yourself Three Questions.
Utilize the meditation technique known as Naikan, which involves reflecting on
three questions: “What have I received from __?”, “What have I given to __?”,
and “What troubles and difficulty have I caused?”
4. Learn Prayers of Gratitude.
In many spiritual traditions, prayers of gratitude are considered to be the most
powerful form of prayer, because through these prayers people recognize the
ultimate source of all they are and all they will ever be.
5. Come to Your Senses.
Through our senses—the ability to touch, see, smell, taste, and hear—we gain an
appreciation of what it means to be human and of what an incredible miracle it
is to be alive. Seen through the lens of gratitude, the human body is not only a
miraculous construction, but also a gift.
6. Use Visual Reminders.
Because the two primary obstacles to gratefulness are forgetfulness and a lack
of mindful awareness, visual reminders can serve as cues to trigger thoughts of
gratitude. Often times, the best visual reminders are other people.
7. Make a Vow to Practice Gratitude.
Research shows that making an oath to perform a behavior increases the
likelihood that the action will be executed. Therefore, write your own
gratitude vow, which could be as simple as “I vow to count my blessings each
day,” and post it somewhere where you will be reminded of it every day.
8. Watch your Language.
Grateful people have a particular linguistic style that uses the language of
gifts, givers, blessings, blessed, fortune, fortunate, and abundance. In
gratitude, you should not focus on how inherently good you are, but rather on
the inherently good things that others have done on your behalf.
9. Go Through the Motions.
If you go through grateful motions, the emotion of gratitude should be
triggered. Grateful motions include smiling, saying thank you, and writing
letters of gratitude.
10. Think Outside the Box.
If you want to make the most out of opportunities to flex your gratitude
muscles, you must creatively look for new situations and circumstances in which
to feel grateful.
Source: Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life