Gratitude is associated with wellbeing and happiness. If you
don’t believe me, there is an entire field in psychology dedicated just to
positive psychology and look up Sonja Lyubomirsky, who is one of the pioneers
in happiness research and may be check this one article.
If you are like with high intellectual curiosity (LOL) or simply love reading,
there is a lot more work and research out there indicating a positive
correlation between gratitude and well-being.
Well, the point of me writing this is not simply to repeat what
research and google are already yelling at you, but to share something that I
have come to realize. I have been maintaining a gratitude journal for over a
year at this point. Every morning (that is days I don’t feel out of control
crazy) I would journal 4 things that I am thankful for. It can be anything from
being thankful for no snow and having sunshine to something bigger that I am
thankful for all my education and my job etc. Here is the big revelation, I
have bipolar disorder (yeah yeah, I take medication for it and I have been in
therapy for a while now). The thing about bipolar disorder is that I feel like
a living sine wave, there are crests and troughs. When I am more on the manic
side or hypomanic side, I have plenty of energy and writing in the gratitude
journal would feel amazing because I would be able to find more than 4 things
to be thankful for everyday. The challenge though is journaling when I feel low
and slightly more on the depressed side, writing in the gratitude journal
becomes way harder. And recently I have come to realize first that it is more
important to journal your gratitude when you feel low than when you feel high.
Secondly, just simply writing about things you are thankful does not give you
as much benefit as writing about things you are thankful for and truly feeling
thankful for those things.
The first thing I said I think is quite obvious and common
sense (or may be not). When you feel depressed or low, you need to count your
blessings and be glad that even though you feel like you are losing your shit,
but shit hasn’t hit the fan yet. This would help you get a perspective and feel
better that life doesn’t suck as much as you think it does. Now I am not asking
you to sugarcoat reality, but there is always some little thing you can be
thankful for because in this giant world with 7 billion people, surely there
would be atleast one person who is yearning for something you have.
Now the second thing, being grateful and meaning it – this is
really important. There have been days when I have felt low and would just
write in my gratitude journal just for the heck of it and feeling lame about
writing on it because I would feel like my life sucks and I am not really
thankful for any of the things I am writing about. Feeling truly grateful is
easier (obviously only if you make the effort in the first place) when things
are going well for you and when you are in a happy and positive mood. But the
challenge and the true benefit is in doing this when you feel low and
depressed. It takes a little extra effort to push your brain to truly open its
eyes to something that you are thankful for. But trust me, this is worth the effort.
We take most things in life for granted but it is when you are depressed that
it is easy to take things even more for granted or to not even notice things in
the first place. Be thankful for the simple pleasures in life, life is too
short to be spent whining or complaining.
