The one simple practice you need to start today if you’re serious about improving your mental health
If you do nothing else, this is the one thing I recommend you incorporate as a non-negotiable into your daily routine: start a gratitude journal.
It sounds simple, but this so called “simple” hack saved my life.
At the start of 2020 I was living in Scotland, I had a new job lined up that was going to give me the five-year visa I needed so I could apply for permanent residency.
Then the pandemic hit and all my security and best laid plans unravelled. The company I was moving to put a recruitment freeze, the company I was moving on from was project-based and the project was over. In one fell swoop I lost my visa, my livelihood and my dreams of a life in the Scottish moors.
Unable to return to Australia, I couldn’t claim any unemployment benefits in the UK because I was not a permanent resident or citizen, and I couldn’t claim any benefits in Australia where, even though I remained a citizen, I was no longer a resident.
I was stuck in an agonising limbo of uncertainty.
I struggled. A lot.
Lockdown hit everyone differently, but when you’ve worked consistently since you were 15 years old, sudden unemployment, especially during enforced quarantine does peculiar things to your mental health.
My underlying anxiety and depression, which I had managed by being an overachiever, suddenly had no outlet. I couldn’t hide from my own thoughts, I couldn’t distract myself with trips overseas, a packed social calendar, or work ridiculous hours to avoid facing the crippling, sometimes terrifying thoughts that were plaguing me.
How was I going to survive without an income? What was the right thing to do: give up on my dreams of living in Scotland and return to Australia, or fight to stay? How would I make sure that the two cats, my little fur-angels that supported me through all the ups and downs as only beloved animal-companions can, would make it back to Australia safely if I had to return? Leaving them was not an option, any more than letting go of a buoy is for a drowning person.
They had already made the journey from Australia to Scotland. I had never envisioned that we would have to go back. It wasn’t part of my plan. I guess a lot of plans came undone in 2020.
Even though I am a certified meditation and mindfulness teacher, there’s only so much a daily meditation practice can do in the face of the unendurable odds. Despite using all the tools I had, and leaning heavily on my own spiritual practice, I was spiralling in a direction that was dark and dangerous.
During a particularly harrowing session over Skype with my therapist, she asked if I was open to trying a gratitude practice. I have to admit I balked at first. What the heck did I have to be grateful for. I was angry. I was angry at the Universe. I was angry at the company that had put on the recruitment freeze and at myself for the decisions I had made that had brought me to this. But she persisted, and I was desperate enough to give anything a try.
I started small, as she suggested. I was grateful for my cats. Their company and companionship, their steady presence during all the upheaval and uncertainty was a balm for my wretched soul. I was grateful I had a home I could safely quarantine within. I had lovely neighbours who reached out via letter-drop to pass on their phone numbers and email address in case we needed groceries, or a chat.
Even if you’re broke, have just been dumped and lost your job, (all of which I was going through at the time) you can practice gratitude and watch how the things around you start to shift. Start by focusing on something small. Like feeling grateful that you can flick a switch and have the lights turn on. Or that you can simply turn of the tap and have clean drinking water.
Research has shown that practicing gratitude improves our general wellbeing, increases our resilience, strengths social relationships, and reduces stress and depression. That’s a lot of benefits for one simple practice. New research also links practicing gratitude to improved immune system health, which with everything going on in the world today is an added bonus that should convince you to give this practice a try.
There’s a neuroscientific reason for all the benefits gratitude has on our health and wellbeing. When we express and show gratitude, our brain releases dopamine, that yummy-feel-good chemical, along with serotonin. These neurotransmitters are what make us feel good and gives us that ‘happy, connected’ feeling.
When we commit to a daily gratitude practice, we are strengthening the neural pathways in our brain. Think of it like drawing over the same line over and over again, so that it becomes thicker and bolder. The thicker the line, the stronger the connection. This means that positive feelings of gratitude start to become second nature.
Gratitude is simply being in a state of thankfulness or feeling grateful and appreciative. It doesn’t have to be a big flashy thing that we need to feel grateful for. When I was stuck in my flat in Scotland, feeling trapped and frustrated, it was small simple things that I found worked. You can’t fake it with gratitude. It has to be felt in order to work.
It’s so easy to get caught up in our negative experiences and focus on everything that isn’t going the way we want it to in our lives.
Where your attention goes, energy flows. What you focus on is what you are giving power to. Ever noticed how you can be having a perfectly good day, and then you read that one email from a co-worker that pisses you off and suddenly your day is completely de-railed. Or you’re driving and in a great mood, and then someone cuts in front of you and suddenly all you can see is red?
The more you focus on what isn’t going right, the more the Universe brings things that match that energy into your experience. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (or observer-expectancy effect / frequency effect) is the scientific term for this.
You know how when you decide you want to buy a blue car, you start noticing blue cars everywhere? It’s not that there are more blue cars suddenly on the roads, it’s just that your attention is on blue cars and so you notice them more. That’s the Baader-Meinhof effect. The same goes for what’s going well in our lives and things we can be grateful for.
Gratitude didn’t fix all the problems that I was facing. It wasn’t some miraculous way to change the situation. It did however, help reduce the levels of stress I was feeling in the moment. It improved my relationship with the people who were there for me, as I practiced feeling gratitude for their steadiness, compassion and love through one of the darkest times of my life.
A gratitude practice can help you learn to break your usual thought cycle. We think somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 thoughts in a day, and 90 per cent of those thoughts are exactly the same as the ones we had the day before. The more we start looking for things to appreciate, the more our focus is drawn to things we can feel grateful for. The more we do this, the more we release dopamine and serotonin, improving our mood and our health and wellbeing. It’s a simple practice but it works.
You can do it first thing in the morning when you get up with your cup of coffee, or right before you go to sleep at night. If you’re feeling really adventurous, you could do both – after all what’s 10 minutes a day for your mental health and wellbeing?
Here are 3 simple journal prompts to get you started:
Write 5 things you are grateful for (it could be your dog, that you have a roof over your head, that you can turn on the tap and have clean drinking water).
Write 5 things you are appreciate about someone you love.
Write 5 things you are appreciate about yourself
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