While the month of November is historically associated with the act of sitting down with family and loved ones and giving thanks before a shared meal, that doesn’t mean that single day should be the only time to focus on gratitude.
Mental health experts have long espoused the benefits of actively practicing gratitude, allowing you to focus on the good and minimizing negative thoughts; the same is true in your workplace. Moving into November make a point to practice gratitude on a regular basis, not just turkey day. Below are seven different ways to incorporate a regular gratitude practice into your work and personal routines:
1. Schedule Your Gratitude — Individuals may choose to use a daily or weekly Gratitude Journal where they are prompted to enter at least one thing they are grateful every day. For those preferring a more tech-focused approach, try setting yourself a reminder or calendar an event each day, week or month where you set aside at least five minutes to focus on gratitude or download one of countless gratitude apps available for all types of devices.
At the workplace, one option is to encourage employees and team members to share what they are grateful for – either through an internal message board, Teams or Slack thread or even something as simple as a pin up bulletin board in the lunchroom. Another option is to do paycheck stuffers or auto emails that go out with direct deposit notices telling employees you are grateful for them and encourage them to take a few minutes to reflect on what brings them gratitude in their own lives.
2. Appreciate any Moment of Gratitude — You (or your employees) may find it daunting to commit to a regular ‘gratitude routine’ — and that’s OK! An important element of bringing gratitude into your personal or work life is that any amount is beneficial. A quick thought or mention to a co-worker about being grateful for their assistance on a project goes a long way; spending 60 seconds pausing in stillness to be grateful for the ability to go back to work after an illness or injury can make every task more joyful.
3. Vary your Gratitude Options — Going to the gym again and again, always repeating the same workout can end up feeling monotonous and lead to burnout, even if you enjoy the results. The same is true of gratitude. For example, if you start using an app to log your gratitude and you vow to ‘spend X minutes every morning logging my gratitude,’ eventually you start to lose the novelty and enjoyment of the exercise. Keep your outlook on gratitude fresh by mixing it up; take a break from your journal and go for a walk and make a mental list of what you are grateful for instead. Varying the way you chronicle your gratitude can keep the process engaging.
4. Replace Ungrateful Thoughts with Grateful Ones — Replacement therapy is a popular tool to help reduce negative thoughts. When it comes to gratitude, take something that frequently is unwelcome (‘this employee always comes back late from their breaks’) and try and replace it with a more grateful alternative tied to that person or situation (‘this employee really stepped up to help out when two people were out with extended illness last year.’) While you are not excusing a potentially negative thought or bad behavior, actively seeking a way to express gratitude may help alleviate stress and expose new ways to deal with a situation.
5. Remember Gratitude at Work is a Multi-Way Street — It is true there is a larger focus on ways employers can make employees feel valued and important, it is essential for employees to recognize that gratitude goes multiple ways. Encourage employees to publicly recognize co-workers who have assisted in key projects; ask junior staff to provide feedback on something like a ‘gratitude board’ for the parts of their work they appreciate (learning a new skill, a flexible schedule to spend more time with kids, etc.).
6. Explore Gratitude Through Helping Others — Volunteering together is not only an excellent team building activity for co-workers, it actually naturally builds a sense of gratitude just through the act of giving back. Spending some of your own time to help others instinctively lets you see your life from someone else’s perspective — That person who benefits from a food drive, the child who gets a mentor or friend, the senior citizen grateful for your delivery of a hot meal — They all look at your life and undoubtably wish they had some aspect of it for themselves. Seeing yourself through another’s eyes allows you to step back a bit and realize all the things you have to be grateful for.
7. Give Yourself Grace — at Home and Work — A final part of any focus on gratitude is the mantra to be gentle with yourself; give yourself grace to sometimes not feel grateful, to be grumpy or to snap at others. It’s natural — we’re human and it’s impossible to always be grateful. In order to make a gratitude practice work, you have to give yourself some slack when it just isn’t there. The important thing is to recognize those moments where gratitude seems impossible, be in that moment and then look to move on to focus on what there is to be grateful for.
