The Psychology Behind Being Thankful
Being thankful can have some powerful benefits that will forever change your life, but it requires you to have a positive mindset that can easily overcome adversity. This is a tall order, especially if you find it difficult to cultivate gratitude for things in your life. However, mastering the art of being thankful could have a drastic impact on your success in life, but also your personal health and mental stability.
Many people find it difficult to avoid self-pity. They’re absorbed in their own troubles, failing to see the world for what it is and becoming too self-critical of their mistakes and actions. This self-loathing eventually lead to anxiety issues, poor health problems and even low self-esteem. It sets you back, impeding any progress you’ve made in your life and affecting every aspect of your lifestyle. From the friends you hang out with your career, everything can be negatively impacted by a lack of gratitude.
Exchanging self-pity for gratitude can be a difficult yet powerful way to live your life and experience more joy. Taking the first steps on this positive journey is daunting, but we’re here to help you understand the benefits of being thankful and how you can flip your attitude around.
Breaking Free From Toxic Emotions
Toxic emotions like anger, self-loathing and regret can poison your mind, creating a spiral of pity and loathing that is difficult to break free from. Some common symptoms of toxic emotions include being far too self-critical, failing to move on from arguments and events in your life, or even finding it difficult to overcome a past relationship. These types of toxic emotions will trap you in these endless arguments with yourself, criticizing your every move and thought and not giving yourself room to breathe.
Toxic emotions can lead to a number of troubling concerns. For instance, research has uncovered a potential link between anger, anxiety, depression and cardiovascular disease. Research points to the possibility that these kinds of emotions could increase the chances of someone developing a form of cardiovascular disease. It could lead to excessive drug use, addiction, drinking or a number of other bad habits that will slowly drain your energy.
It’s important to consider the harm that these toxic emotions can cause to your life. It can be difficult to break out of the cycle of self-pity and self-loathing, but doing so can have a positive effect on your life.
What Gratitude Offers Us
Being thankful can actually offer us a surprising number of advantages outside of just breaking free from your toxic emotions. For example, it could:
- Improve your psychological health by pushing out negative toxic emotions and introducing positive ones
- Improve your overall physical health since you’ll be more inclined to attend regular hospital check-ups and work out to maintain a healthy lifestyle
- Control your aggression, allowing you to remain calm in difficult situations (whether it’s with a custom or family members)
- Increase your sensitivity, allowing you to empathize with people around you
- Help you sleep better at night
- Can greatly improve your self-esteem and confidence
- Help you access more opportunities for advancement in the future, whether it’s in a career or even an ongoing relationship
As you can see, there are a number of fantastic benefits that being thankful can offer. Whether it’s giving you a boost in your personal health or giving you more confidence in your abilities, it’s a fantastic way to transform your life in a positive light.
Signs You Need To Be More Thankful
Of course, not everyone understands when or why they should be more thankful throughout their day. A lot of people are completely fine with living their lives in self-pity, but they usually don’t understand the knock-on effects that it has on not just themselves, but the people around them.
If you find that it’s difficult to move on from arguments, relationships or heated debates, then you might be thinking about too many toxic emotions. Similarly, if you feel that you’re too critical of others or self-critical about yourself, then it’s possible that you’re harboring a lot of negative thoughts. This can eventually transform into feelings that you’re being held back, and could even result in procrastinating and a lack of decision-making ability. All of these signs point towards too much self-pity and not enough gratitude.
Cultivating Gratitude
Now that we’ve established that being thankful makes you happier, how do you take advantage of this? In this section, we’re going to talk about a couple of ways that you can cultivate gratitude for the upcoming holiday season to help you become more positive.
- Sit down and reflect on positives. It can be easy to only focus on negatives in your life, so taking some time to sit down, meditate and count your blessings can be an excellent way to cultivate gratitude.
- Keep a journal of your gratitude. A great habit to develop is writing down the things you’re grateful for. This is often called a gratitude journal and will eventually contain all of the things that you’re thankful for, making it a great place to inspire yourself to become more positive.
- Write down some thank-you messages. Keeping thoughts and ideas in your mind means they’ll eventually disappear, so writing them down is a great way to prevent them from being lost forever. Writing down thank-you messages to people is a great way to visualize your feelings.
- Thank someone in your head. If you don’t have time to call or message someone, just thank them in your head. Remember that it’s all about cultivating gratitude and getting used to the idea of being thankful for everything instead of focusing only on self-pity.
We hope that this post has been helpful in teaching some of the psychology behind being thankful and why gratitude is such an important and powerful tool to help you live a happier and more fulfilling lifestyle. For more information, don’t hesitate to check out our home page or blog for assistance with anxiety issues and similar problems.