Thanksgiving All Year Long: 5 Simple Gratitude Practices for Daily Life

5 Simple Gratitude Practices for Daily Life

1) Begin with Gratitude for Your Body—Elaine Smookler

Some days I wake up and notice that my spring has already sprung and each movement has a kind of creaking quality. After years of practicing mindfulness, it makes me smile. Whatever experience I’m having—good, bad, pleasant, unpleasant—I will never pass this way again. 

This is an invitation to explore the experience of the present moment in all its gory glory. You can do this practice sitting, standing, upside down or whatever way you find the present moment. 

1. Let’s start by taking three nice big breaths. Breathe in for a count of three and out for a count of five. Do you notice? You’re alive. It’s actually kind of amazing. Can you bring your attention to the jaw-dropping wonder that is the human body?
2. Let’s start with the toes, bringing attention to your feet touching the ground. You may be amazed by how many sensations there are to experience, whether it’s tingling, pulsing, restlessness, hot, cool, moist, dry, ticklish, itchy, numb, neutral. What do you notice about paying attention to these small experiences? Is it possible that they could help you cultivate gratitude for this body that’s going to accompany you through your life?
3. As you move up the legs, what do you feel? Whenever I feel anything uncomfortable, I notice how much I want to make meaning out of it. Instead, I invite us all to just feel what’s here without making any meaning of it at all. It’s all so interesting. So this is what’s happening now. 
4. Moving up the land of pelvis, I notice clenching the moment I go to explore sensations in my bladder. Do I dare? Again, reminding myself that it’s not about trying to relax or make anything easier or better. I use these moments of awareness to widen the palette of colors available to experience what it is to be a human. When you do this, what do you notice? 
5. Continuing the journey up the body, eventually we encounter the beautiful belly filled with so many stories. Loss, longing, yearning, wanting. Can you be grateful for all that it’s experienced and send it love and appreciation? 
6. Moving up through the torso, this luscious landscape which houses heart and lungs, you may picture an inner river pumping and flowing, bringing juicy life through the body.
7. When you reach your shoulders, you can lay gentle hands on yourself, massaging some of the day’s stress away. Taking a moment to be grateful for all that our shoulders shoulder. Swooping down through arms to fingers, I thank them for allowing me to be independent in so many ways. Can you offer appreciation to your hands and arms that work so hard? 
8. We visit the neck and face. Are lips dry or moist? Are your teeth clenched? What about the jaw? Can you feel the air moving in and out of your nostrils? Can you notice your eyeballs, top of head, back of head, side of head, and ears?
9. On an out-breath, let go of focused awareness. On an in-breath, expand your attention around the entire body, noticing all the sensations reminding you that you are alive right now. What do you notice when you bring the spirit of gratitude into every precious moment that you and your body share together?

2) Allow Gratitude to Connect You to All Living Things—Shauna Shapiro

Mindfulness, self-compassion, gratitude, and the practices that emerge from them help free us from the prison of isolation and the delusion of separation. These practices open our minds, awaken our hearts, and deepen our sense of connection with ourselves, each other, and our world. We begin to realize that we are never just practicing for ourselves. Transforming ourselves creates echoes in the universe, because as we heal ourselves, we heal each other, and our world. As renowned author Arianna Huffington beautifully puts it, “Living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace.” 

1. Begin by settling the mind and body, taking a seat on a chair, on the floor, or wherever you can sit comfortably upright. Allow a soft smile to rest on your lips, not as a way to paper over how you are feeling, but simply to invite in rest and ease.

2. Bring your awareness to the simple sensations of breathing. Feel how the breath is supporting you, oxygenating the body with each inhale, releasing stress and toxins with each exhale. Begin to sense the beating of your heart. Become aware of how the heart is supporting you, sending blood carrying oxygen and nutrients to all the trillions of cells in your body. Invite in a feeling of gratitude and kindness toward your breath, your heart, your body.

3. Begin to feel your body in your seat, and let your awareness expand to include the earth below you, supporting you. Allow yourself to rest into the Earth, to feel held by the Earth. Feel how there is nothing more you need to do in this moment.

4. Reflect on how the Earth is supporting all beings equally, and that gravity is keeping all beings tethered to the Earth. Reflect on how this planet is connected to a solar system and a vast universe. And that all things—all humans, all animals, the Earth, the sun, and the stars—are composed of the same matter, the same basic particles. We are literally all made of stardust.

5. Feel the web of life into which we are born, from which we can never fall. Feel how you are part of this web. Nothing is separate.

6. Feel yourself resting with gratitude in the heart of the universe. Begin to send your good wishes to all beings, gently and silently repeating, “May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be safe and protected. May all beings be happy. May all beings be filled with love and kindness.”

7. And then recognize that you are contained within the good wishes for all beings. Rest your attention once again on this one being sitting here, and silently direct the good wishes to yourself: “May I be peaceful. May I be safe and protected. May I be happy. May I be filled with love and kindness.”

8. As you breathe in, you are breathing in this loving-kindness, and as you breathe out, you are sending this loving-kindness out. May all beings here and everywhere dwell with peace. May the Earth dwell in peace. And close by offering: May this practice be of benefit for all beings.

Excerpted from Good Morning, I Love You:  Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire Your Brain for Calm, Clarity and Joy by Shauna Shapiro, PhD. Sounds True, June 2022.  Reprinted with permission.

3) Awaken the Flow of Gratitude in Nature—Georgina Miranda

Regardless of where I am experiencing nature—at a local city park, perched up high on mountain tops, or swimming in the sea—I’ve found it is always a good time to pause and be present with the gratitude I feel for our inherent connectedness to nature. Our breath is an anchor that can always bring us home. A few deep breaths, connecting with the space we are in, bring home a knowing that there is no separation between us. We need our Grand Mother, the Earth—her air to fill our lungs, her living things to feed us, her awe to keep our souls warm. She needs us too—to look after her, to shift our day-to-day ways of living, to treat her as one of our dearest friends.

Next time you are in nature, see if you can shift from a state of doing into a state of being. The key difference between exercise and movement is that when you move with the intention of exercise, you quickly enter a state of doing. Movement is free-flowing and allows you to enter a state of being. The benefits are vast when you allow yourself to be one with the nature you choose, connecting and moving with gratitude.

1. Give yourself permission to be. Go into nature without an agenda or expectations and just to be with it and move with it. If you are struggling with stress, anxiety, depression, or sluggishness, let movement outside help ignite an internal shift. 

2. Breathe and pay attention. Bring all the attention to your breath, its rhythm, its ability to inspire a reset with each inhale and exhale. Notice the air you are breathing in, the smells, the temperature, the freshness. Let each inhale be an opportunity to connect you deeper with the nature you are in. Let each exhale be an opportunity to let go of anything that is not needed at this moment. 

3. Breathe and feel deeper. When you’re connected to your breath, what else do you feel? As you take each step, what flows through your body? How does the sun, wind, snow, or rain feel on your skin? What can you hear? While you notice each breath you take, can you start to unite with the space you are in, versus be separate from it? Can you notice you are one with the earth, the air, the water, around you? 

4. Breathe and open up to gratitude. Look around, and while staying connected to your breath, let your heart open to any gratitude that’s arising in this moment. Gratitude for the pause in the busyness of life and existence…to your body for its willingness to move freely…to this natural setting and the natural gifts from Mother Earth to you…for this moment of well-being…for knowing that this type of movement, state of awareness, and pause all in one is always available to you. 

5. Surrender. Surrender completely with the help of the beautiful nature around you. Become one with it, one with your breath. Just be and soak in the feeling of liberation that can come from the present moment. 

4) Counteract Resentment—Barry Boyce

To begin this gratitude practice, I’d like to start by considering one of the biggest obstacles to gratitude: resentment. We can dress up our resentment with a sophisticated storyline about how others—one, or many, or multitudes—are doing us wrong, but what it simply boils down to is being upset because we’re not getting what we want.

The world is too complex and multifaceted for us to continually get our way. It’s good to aspire for the best for ourselves and others, while nonetheless remaining committed to the journey more than the satisfaction of achieving a fixed outcome. If everyone gets their way, we can’t have a cooperative world. From time to time, we need to undercut our own perspective and see things from the other side—maybe even from all sides. Gratitude is a practice that can work with the tendency to cling to fixed outcomes and to feel resentful when we don’t get our way. 

1. Bring to mind something that seems unlikely to change and that you do not accept. Perhaps it’s something that’s happened to you or it’s something that’s going on with a loved one or in the world at large. It can be big or small.
2. Counter-intuitively say thank you for that. You’re not being thankful for the thing itself, you’re being thankful for the opportunity to let go. To accept how things unfold doesn’t mean we condone bad behavior or indulge in pessimism or martyrdom. Rather, the point is to use gratitude to undercut our resistance to working creatively with difficult situations. 
3. For about 3 minutes, keep imagining things you resent, that you’re irritated about, things that you have trouble accepting or allowing.Try having an attitude that says, “Thank you for the opportunity to work with this.” When we open to deep gratitude for the opportunity to let go of our grasping to outcomes, we can foster a kind of embryonic openness that can lead to other more outward kinds of gratitude. 
4. In this next step, let’s be grateful in concentric circles, moving out from our immediate situation, with prompts like the following: I’m grateful to have the necessities of life. I’m grateful to have people to love and to share love with. I’m grateful for friends and the companionship they offer. I’m grateful for the people who serve my needs, who pick up the garbage, take care of the roads, or fix my bicycle. I’m grateful for the people who provide energy and take care of the vast infrastructure that supports society and life. Thank you to the people who sell me food. I’m grateful to health care workers. I’m grateful to the people who are dedicated to keeping me safe. Finally, I’m grateful for the need to encounter those who mean harm, who are tormented by mental and physical pain that causes them to act badly or even violently. While I do not condone purposefully harmful actions, I am grateful that there is a spark of compassion available for those who do harm, and for all of us when we do harm, and the possibility of beneficial change emerging in time. Thank you very much. I’m grateful to share this with you.

5) Nurture a Felt Sense of Gratitude—Gina Rollo White

In this practice, we will be connecting ideas and thoughts with bodily sensations. I’ll walk you through all of it. Follow along and do what works for you.

1. Choose a posture that’s comfortable for you: standing, sitting, or lying down. If you want to close your eyes, you can. Know that at any point, if you feel uncomfortable, you can always open them. If you are standing, sometimes closing your eyes can make you a little wobbly, so you can open them, adjust, and close them again. 

2. Before we begin, take a nice big inhale. So inhale…and exhale. In this practice, we will be connecting ideas and thoughts with bodily sensations. I’ll walk you through all of it. Follow along and do what works for you. 

3. Begin by noticing the length of your body. Just noticing the entire length of your body, from your feet all the way up to the top of your head. And bring to mind this idea of length, but also this idea of strength and pride. Feel yourself, standing tall or lengthening long, and connect with the sensation of your feet all the way up to the top of your head, so the entire length of your body is connected with the idea of strength and pride and length. 

4. Now we’ll move to the back of our body. See if you can imagine what the back of your body looks like—the back of your head, your back, your seat, the back of your feet—and connect that with the idea of the past. Everything that’s behind you, your entire past, is connected with the backs of your shoulder blades, your seat. Maybe you can notice the space in between your shirt and your body, or the space in between your shoulder blades. Just bring to mind the back of your body, and connect it with the past. 

5. Next, we move to the sides of our body. See if you can imagine the sides of your body from shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, outside edges of your feet, maybe ear to ear. Think of that as connecting with the outside world, connecting with community. Even raise your arms up and see if you can create a little circle around yourself. Connect the sides of your body with this idea of protecting yourself, so you can create boundaries. But also, if you can, open up and reach your arms really wide, reaching out to your community, to those around you. Notice how you can reach really far and feel connected with those around you, but also create the safety of boundaries, connecting with the sides of your body, your shoulders, your hips, the outside of your feet. 

6. Take a moment to continue connecting with community by sending thoughts of love and kindness and gratitude toward others. Bring to mind someone or something, maybe a pet, that you have an uncomplicated relationship with, who you feel safe with. As you bring to mind someone who creates safety or something that creates safety, imagine sending these words to them: May you feel love and kindness. May you feel safe and secure. May you feel healthy and strong. 

7. And now, broaden those kind thoughts to your inner circle or your local community or neighborhood. Bringing to mind your community, send thoughts of love and gratitude: May you feel love and kindness. Imagining. All those people. May you feel safe and secure. 

8. Continue opening your arms and your circle of love and gratitude. Broadening your arms even more, maybe continuing it out to your nation, to your continent. Imagine all the people and beings on your continent, and then even further out, to the entire world: May you all feel love and kindness. May everyone, every being, every animal feel safe and secure. May you all feel healthy and strong. 

9. And now, bring your arms in closer to your body. Making that circle smaller and smaller, you can come back to our neighborhood, your community, all the way back to that first person or animal that makes you feel safe and secure. Connect with the outside of your body, the outside of your feet, your hips and shoulders. 

10. Bring your focus now to your internal world. What’s occurring inside of your body? Notice your heartbeat, your stomach digesting, your lungs as you inhale and exhale. Connect that with the idea of present-moment awareness. What’s occurring right now, in this moment? Your breath. Your heartbeat. And also yourself, connecting your awareness with all that you are. Take a moment to send yourself gratitude and love and kindness. If it’s available to you, put your hands over your heart. 

11. Think to yourself as you’re standing here in this present moment: May I feel love and kindness. May I feel safe and secure. May I be healthy and strong. May I be happy. Place your hands by your side, and move from the internal once again to the external. From the front of your body, the tips of your toes to your belly, to the outside of your chest, the outside of your shoulders, your face. Connect the front of your body with the idea of forward movement, and with the idea of all that is before you. 

12. Picture your entire body, connecting all the parts. The front of your body, the sides of your body, the back of your body, internal head to toe. Bringing it all into one thought, one image, and take a moment to send yourself some gratitude. You might say to yourself, Great job. Great job for practicing today. Maybe even put your hands over your heart again and saying, Thank you.

13. Place your arms by your side, and then if you can, as you inhale, reach your arms up really high, all the way up. As you exhale, lower your arms. If your eyes were closed, you can open them. Just take a moment to look around and take in the colors, the sights, maybe even the sounds. 

14. Get curious about what you feel right now. What is the quality you feel right now? And then as you close this practice, give yourself one final moment of gratitude, saying to yourself, Thank you. Great job.