Grateful: Being happy with what you have

Edwin Selij
July 24, 2019

Being grateful is related to feeling good. How good are you feeling right now? Are you balking at what you have in your life or are you happy with what you have? If you are angry with the world and with people around you and that which fills your day you can become very unhappy. It is then important to shift your focus and being grateful is one such shift that can help you live with more contentment from day to day

Gratitude

Gratitude deals with being mindful of the positive things that happen in your life. You are aware that the positive things in your life are not just there, but came about because of something. You are then aware of the cause of your happiness and grateful for that cause.

This also allows you to choose to be the cause of your own gratitude. This gives you great resilience and makes you feel positive[1].

Being Grateful

As mentioned, there is a connection between being grateful and feeling happy. Positive emotions influence what you think and what you do. Adopting a mindset that generally leads you to experience positive emotions can help you in (future) stressful situations.

For example, by being grateful, you feel more connected to the people in your life, and your life also feels more meaningful. These are two important factors that contribute to how good you feel[2].

Research shows, for example, that people who care for those with dementia and practice gratitude also make greater use of positive techniques to feel better and cope with difficult situations. These include, for example, practicing acceptance, reframing, using humor, seeking emotional support, and turning to religion.

Be happy with what you have

There are a number of techniques that will help you increase your gratitude making it easier to be grateful on a daily basis.

List of things to be thankful for

One such technique is to make a list of everything you are grateful for, for example:

I am grateful for...

  1. My Partner
  2. My children
  3. My work
  4. My team
  5. My Computer
  6. Companies that help me with my business
  7. My Parents
  8. My brothers/sisters
  9. My car
  10. My House
  11. Decorating my home
  12. The coffee I can make every morning
  13. My Health
  14. That I can go on vacation.
  15. Etc. etc.

If you do this and grab that list from time to time when you're in a slump and think you have nothing you'll find out you have quite a lot after all.

Daily gratitude

Another way to strengthen your gratitude is to write down 3 things each night that you are grateful for that day. You write down 3 things that went well and why they went well.

If you do this for a week, it will already have an effect on the amount of gratitude you feel and how happy you are.

Using these types of techniques, even if you are in a really bad situation right now, can do an awful lot to, for example, suffer less from depressive thoughts[4].

By being more grateful, you’ll experience positive emotions more often and behave more socially; you’ll feel a sense of connection, become less materialistic, and your relationships will improve.

Furthermore, gratitude helps you reflect on your actions by evoking positive emotions. When faced with a negative emotion, such as fear, you can really only think of a few options for dealing with a situation—such as fleeing, fighting, or freezing. Whereas if you experience a positive emotion in a given situation, you’ll come up with many more ways to turn that situation into an opportunity for something better.

Fun, for example, makes you want to play, be creative, discover or stretch your limit and so on.

Curiosity makes you want to explore certain situations, learn new information and develop yourself.

Gratitude is often the basis for such positive emotions[5].

Showing gratitude

Showing gratitude is also very important for strengthening your social bonds. Research shows, for example, that leaders in organizations who take pride in their work are also more likely to stand up for their employees and express gratitude. This also makes you more selfless. As a result, you’re more likely to do something for someone else without expecting anything in return[6].

Changing your mindset to be more grateful

Sometimes, though, it’s really hard to be grateful. Suppose a loved one has passed away—it’s hard to see the silver lining in that. If you’ve just been laid off, it’s also sometimes very hard to think, “Yay, I have more free time,” because how are you supposed to spend it when you know you won’t have any money in your account next month?

It is therefore very important to interpret an event in a different way. The way you interpret events, how you feel about them, and how you behave as a result all depend on your beliefs.

Your beliefs are say your opinion of how the world works and how you function in it. Hypnosis can help you change those beliefs. For example, the first step is to find out where the belief originated and whether it has created a pattern in your life where you find it difficult to be grateful for what you have.

This is done through regression. During regression, while under hypnosis, you go back to the moment when the belief that you don’t need to be grateful first arose. For example, you may have suddenly decided that you simply deserve certain things or that being grateful doesn’t help anyway. These are often moments from your childhood, because that is the period in your life when your beliefs about how the world works and your role in it are formed.

Because this often takes place during childhood, the results of regression can be quite surprising.

You then go on to do something with that moment while under hypnosis. This might include imagining how another person must have felt at that moment or how that person might have behaved as well.

This often helps you get rid of limiting beliefs very quickly, making it easier for you to be grateful.

Suggestions for more gratitude

Regression is one of the many ways you can gain new beliefs that will help you be more grateful. Another way is by using hypnotic suggestions to place new beliefs deep within you that will more quickly make them part of how you think about the world and how you will behave as a result.

Because you repeat or hear those suggestions while under hypnosis, it works better than reading them off the screen now. In addition, the suggestions are personalized for everyone because they depend on the limiting beliefs you have.

A few examples:

Hindering belief: I deserve to have a job.

Hypnotic suggestion: You are working hard to get a job.

Hindering belief: If I show my gratitude I come across as weak.

Hypnotic suggestion: Showing gratitude strengthens bonds with people for whom I am grateful.

Showing gratitude with hypnosis

So if you have the beliefs that help you be more grateful, hypnosis can also help you show that gratitude. In fact, hypnosis can help you perform desired behaviors with guided visualization and hypnotic suggestion.

In such a guided visualization, the hypnotist helps your imagination about how to show someone your gratitude. How do you do it at work? How do you do it with friends and/or family? Do you do it very casually or do it with a bunch of flowers? How do you make sure it is somewhat fluid and what do you do if the person reacts lukewarmly to your gratitude?

Visualization doesn't just address what you say. You also visualize how you feel and what you hear. Depending on your imagination and to what extent you can use things from your senses, the hypnotist can make use of them.

After the visualization, you often receive a post-hypnotic suggestion. This is a kind of assignment of what you will do when you are no longer under hypnosis, such as:

"From now on, when you notice that someone is helping you and you are happy with that you say thank you to that person," says the company.

So hypnosis can help you be grateful by addressing your mindset and behavior. Hypnosis helps you shift your focus from what you are not happy with to what you are happy with.

Want to know if you can be hypnotized and if you can hypnotize others? Then come to a hypnosis workshop.

If you’d like to learn techniques right away that will help you assist others—for example, by fostering greater gratitude—sign up now for one of our courses or check out another event.

[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/53ba/46cd0043ef898a3c0b8ce9808f7e2ec338e2.pdf

[2] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-16017-010

[3] https://watermark.silverchair.com/igx004.2913.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAl4wggJaBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggJLMIICRwIBADCCAkAGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMt7djozvZnSr4k_BCAgEQgIICEQlhS8FJUahUKQR1ODXNYQDwBGm6xGUVJRgCsEzvWSVIxcA_HSroim79F5ZHyGiZZO9lAuYaI7rgywRnrJw8PheCF0N50qCOw09sXAfznoYVAjHV_8CFNte9_23Cz0WH3vClfQW1KUsY8a6MiW23CYg9nzX6Hsjh3SfsmrlZY4jdYiJ9rdYERgQgroe_dRVzGeBRfT_UicYoBklHpAt9qGpaFAoBHzgFH_4wRwBb-yynj1Qv7IjnnvduPsEtq3XxH_ACJtQPXSqpq5VcheRM-jLPH1NiSFndDLQVD15oVc1vCuHzwkk3H9ph7jbMYSG4VeBVuEXzLk2pBKDpX6x_scKVwfEMRKO2SJM4QsDgJk8Yc33DI3p-6AS28fEPJPtB3EM7NPngxH9uQTXiG5u1zWUWermMEbVpaziz2-BLd_ImOBY1jCmqHJ2G6eVP2krVt6x5ZmGgYe-C72pFqV014NSabCUNurl4qL1m0C30KraI49YvLvvC8b3DP8FGFTOJKOxnIKGX7M8VQm8PRnYIH5wAXuAcKiQoJeHwcX777xbIBv-MAilUeKNDdkJGtkWvdolVYhzaLi1wSeCpQ0T6E0fssOU0DCM4yb3oXEj5ZiMjqiwv4x_L6FYFFEnD6f3Ifojo8cwucGaKcOueCPEv47XH0Ex-wnMFhJX6w_fjXLWuAofuVEJa-MD1BlN5pTzsh0Y

[4] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/53ba/46cd0043ef898a3c0b8ce9808f7e2ec338e2.pdf

[5] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02699931.2011.595393

[6] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1548051809333338