How to Cultivate Gratitude & Acceptance
It is that time of year again, a time to stop and remember what we are thankful for. A time to share gratitude with others. While this Thanksgiving may not look like ones we have had in the past, can we pause and cultivate a sense of acceptance along with our gratitude? I have found that when I accept the present moment, I am in turn grateful for where I am in life. If gratitude and acceptance are not in your current meditative practice, not to worry - I will share some ways to incorporate these two practices in your daily life.
What is gratitude and how can I cultivate it?
Gratitude is an expression of appreciation for what one has. It is the quality of being thankful towards individuals and the world. When you practice gratitude you are not constantly seeking more or trying to be somewhere else. You accept where you are and continue to work towards your goals without the need to control every aspect of it. When the brain of those who practice gratitude are scanned, lasting changes are shown in the prefrontal cortex - there is an increase in sensitivity to future gratitude experiences. Individuals who practice gratitude share they are more happy, less stressed, and have better overall health. Gratitude while considered a prosocial behavior, is also highly effective when done on your own. Here are ways you can cultivate gratitude in the comfort of your own home:
Designate a journal just to jot down one thing a day you are grateful for. If writing it down is not your thing, set a time each day, perhaps before bed to review and think of one thing that happened or did not happen, but that you accept in that moment that you are grateful for.
During your meditation practice, include gratitude as the main focus or one part of your meditation. Allow the meditation to include gratitude towards those who are neutral to you, dear to you, those who you may have conflict with, strangers, the old, young, people far away, and near. The individual who brings conflict in your life could teach you something or help you resolve an area in you that could be beneficial. Being grateful towards someone who you do not know, like the essential worker who scanned your food at the store is worth sending appreciation to also.
Sending a text, email, or letter to a loved one, friend, or family member is an easy way to share gratitude at any point in your day. Especially these days, an unexpected message from a friend extending gratefulness gives both the receiver and the sender a moment of connection and positivity.
How does acceptance fit into this? How can I cultivate acceptance?
While you could be thinking, acceptance is the complete opposite of gratitude, you are in a sense correct. Acceptance is experiencing events fully as they are without being in defense and no matter how distressing an event may be. Taking acceptance further, there is a intervention called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) that is an empirically-based branch of behavior analysis that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies along with commitment and behavior change to increase flexibility in thinking and outcomes. There are six components to ACT and here are some ways you can understand and better cultivate acceptance in present day using the six processes:
Acceptance: Instead of avoiding outcomes or sensations, acceptance means you are aware of the private event and allow it to occur. The objective is not necessarily to wish the thought away or make it stop, you are accepting the thought and allowing yourself to experience it. A present day example of this could be a thought like, “What if someone around me gets seriously ill and I lose him/her?” In this scenario, you would allow the thought to come up, instead of trying to get rid of it, you accept that it is a possibility and allow yourself to sit with the emotion.
Cognitive Defusion: To see a thought as just that, a thought. When you look at the scenario above, the process of cognitive defusion allows you to understand that your fear of losing someone is just that - a fear. It is not actually occurring, it is in the mind. The mind is something external from you. The thought is something external from you.
Being Present: One of my favorites. This is the non judgmental act of noticing the private event that is happening and then choosing to redirect your attention to the present moment. Tune into your sensations: what do you see, smell, feel, hear, taste? Now is another moment we can embrace.
Self as Context: Self as context means we are not the content of our experience. This is the place where observations are made without form or content. We are not our thoughts, the events that occur, our fears, or feelings. The stories we have created for ourselves are our perspective alone. We are aware of our experiences as an observer without attachment or investment of which experiences occur.
Values: Values not in the sense of accomplishments, but who we want to be and what we want our life to be about. Value brings direction in times when we are in difficult situations. This is an individual process that can be viewed in various domains like your career, spirituality, and family. Values place the emphasis on the choices you make in life based on your needs, not the expectations of others or what you should be doing. Put in another way, what gives your life meaning? At present, our values probably shifted. What we once put emphasis on may look differently. A few months ago, maybe you valued more materialistic attempts at getting ahead in life and wanted to do everything in your power to get there. Now, given our present circumstance, this possibly shifted to finding ways to connect more with family and friends as a value.
Committed Action: What are some concrete goals you can make towards your values? Maybe you would like more spirituality in your life. Committed action would mean you spend 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening to practice mindful meditation. Or maybe you would like to move to a quieter community closer to your loved ones. Committed action would be taking steps to secure your finances and credit. Focus on short-term and long-term behaviors that will move you closer to your values.
So while gratitude and acceptance are on opposite ends, they have a common purpose. Gratitude teaches us to be aware of how far we have come and thank those on our path who helped us along the way, while acceptance brings our awareness to the unpleasant situation we may be in, but teaches us to be compassionate with ourselves through steps like being in the present moment. Acceptance helps us realize that the difficulty is not permanent, and through committed action, we can continue to make our reality not only more bearable, but fulfilling. So this thanksgiving, I ask you to think of one thing you are grateful for and one difficultly that you committedly accept.
