Written by: Nadija Bajrami, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Let’s talk about what gratitude is, why living in gratitude is so important and how hypnotherapy and mind coaching can help you be consistently more grateful.
“For my part, I am almost contented just now and very thankful. Gratitude is a divine emotion: it fills the heart, but not to bursting; it warms it, but not to fever.” ‒ Charlotte Brontë
What is gratitude?
The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness (depending on the context). In some ways, gratitude encompasses all these meanings.
Gratitude is a positive emotion that involves being thankful and appreciative of what we receive, whether tangible or intangible and is associated with several mental and physical health benefits.
With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what we receive. With gratitude, we acknowledge the goodness in our lives. In the process, we usually recognize that the source of that goodness lies at least partially outside ourselves. As a result, gratitude also helps us connect to something larger than ourselves as individuals — whether to other people, nature, or a higher power. Gratitude gathers people and keeps them together.
Gratitude is a way for us to appreciate what we have instead of always reaching for something new in the hopes it will make us happier or thinking we can't feel satisfied until every physical and material need is met. Gratitude helps us refocus on what we have instead of what we lack.
Why is making gratitude part of our daily life so important?
In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness.
It is said that practicing the power of gratitude enhances satisfaction by the same amount as doubling your income.
There have been talks and research suggesting that giving thanks can make us happier and overcome our feeling of being lost and overwhelmed. Expressing gratitude on a regular basis can actually lift the spirits and should really become a part of our life.
Gratitude is a word we hear so often nowadays, and many dismiss gratitude and usually see it as something we should probably do more often but don’t. What we truly don’t realize is there are many health benefits to gratitude and that, in fact, there is scientific proof to back it up.
All it takes is a small gesture of gratitude each day to bring happiness into our lives, not realizing that, overall, the small moments really are big ones. Remember, life is a collection of all these so-called small moments.
Expressing gratitude to others and ourselves stimulates positive emotions (primarily happiness), thus producing pleasure and contentment and influencing our overall health and well-being.
Gratitude was a major aspect of ancient philosophies and cultures. In Roman culture, Cicero mentions gratitude as the “mother” of all human feelings.
Studies have proven that moral judgments involving feelings of gratefulness are induced in the right anterior temporal cortex at the brain level. These same studies reveal the reason why some of us are more grateful than others are the neurochemical differences in the central nervous system. Those with a higher level of grey matter in the right inferior temporal gyrus express and feel more gratitude.
Gratitude is often described as a ‘natural antidepressant.’ When we express and receive gratitude, our brain releases dopamine and serotonin, our ‘feel good’ neurotransmitters. Immediately our mood is enhanced, and we feel happy.
Here are some ways to cultivate gratitude on a regular basis:
Write a thank-you note. We can make ourselves happier and nurture our relationship with another person by writing a thank-you letter expressing our appreciation of that person's impact on our life. And once in a while, we can also write one to ourselves
Thank someone mentally. No time to write? It may help just to think about someone who has done something nice for us and mentally thank this person
Keep a gratitude journal. Make it a habit to write down what we are grateful for
Count our blessings. Pick a time every week to sit down and write about our blessings — As we write, we think about the sensations we felt when something good happened to us
Pray. Pray the way we want and according to our own beliefs but pray, as praying and asking for guidance is an amazing way to cultivate gratitude
Meditate. Focus on the present moment without judgment. Just focus on what we're grateful for (the warmth of the sun, a pleasant sound, our family, friends, health...)
Let's list just a few benefits of gratitude:
Increased happiness and positive mood
Less materialistic
Better physical health
Better sleep
Greater resiliency
Encourages the development of patience, humility, and wisdom
Increases prosocial behaviours
Strengthens relationships
The positive ripple effect of practicing gratitude:
Gratitude is such a powerful, positive emotion and practicing it daily can really help us in challenging times in difficult situations. Quite simply, when we are grateful, we acknowledge the goodness in our lives. We can be grateful for the people in our lives, for the experiences we have, for the opportunities we have. And when we are being grateful, we are focusing our attention on what we have rather than what we don’t have. This makes us feel good and we feel good because we are producing lovely, positive chemicals in our brain. We get rewarded with the lovely neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine, which make us feel happier, and more able to cope and reduce our levels of anxiety, stress, and fear. How good is that?
As already mentioned, Gratitude improves our health and wellbeing.
This is being acknowledged by science more and more. It reduces negative emotions and helps people with depression and anxiety.
Research has shown that being grateful makes us feel happier, decreases our stress, reduces inflammation, lifts our mood, increases motivation, improves our quality of sleep, and develops our emotional awareness and resilience. Our whole being, from physical to psychological, is helped enormously by daily gratitude practice.
Did you know that you cannot think of a positive and a negative thought at the same time?
And the good news is that the more you do it, the more you practice gratitude, and the more you develop pathways in the brain that favour looking for the positives rather than the negatives. When we are grateful, when we pay attention to the good things in our world, we are strengthening and reinforcing those positive memories. By recalling the good things, the sparkling moments, and remembering them, we are ingraining them more deeply into our memory. So, you can definitely train your brain to notice what you are grateful for. You can train your brain to pay attention to the positive aspects of your life rather than focusing on the negative. And when you recall the good things, you get the happiness buzz all over again. How wonderful is that?
A solution-focused approach combining hypnotherapy and mind coaching can help people notice what is good in their life.
Hypnotherapy and mind coaching: two powerful tools to help you cultivate an ‘attitude of gratitude’:
Hypnotherapy and mind coaching help you be more grateful and help you develop this habit of expressing gratitude and giving thanks because they help you change your mindset so that you automatically look for, notice, and appreciate things that make you feel good.
Whether you choose to appreciate your surroundings or not, you will ultimately get what you think about. So, why not think more about uplifting things and things that you like?
Training your mind in this way is the fastest way to attract better people, circumstances, and experiences into your life.
We all want to be happy, yet we often go about it the wrong way by paying attention to current conditions and more specifically, what is not working in our lives.
It’s perfectly normal to want more than you have; in fact, you couldn’t stop doing that even if you tried. It’s just that if you don’t notice what you have to be thankful for right now, you block the process of expansion and pinch yourself off from your desires.
Hypnotherapy and mind coaching will help you to train your mind to look for and celebrate the good things, big and small, that you experience daily. As you do this, you will feel more aligned and you will become a much happier person.
In hypnotherapy, the therapist can use hypnosis, mindfulness and gratitude, incorporating suggestions of gratitude to improve feelings of well-being and to identify inner strengths which you may have forgotten that you have. I always like to include suggestions to encourage you to appreciate yourself and be grateful for who you are. This enables you to change your focus and slowly change your perceptions so that whatever problems we have, we can learn to reflect and accept the good things in our lives. Throughout the day, you can consciously choose to stay present at this moment, accepting that life is a step-by-step and moment-by-moment process and one moment simply leads to the next. Whatever is going on in your life, you can be grateful for being you. Incorporating this into your daily life will bring an increased sense of happiness and well-being.
In these strange and quite challenging times, it is vital that we cultivate gratitude on a regular basis and that we give thanks for being alive, for this amazing solidarity we can see worldwide, for having loved ones in our life, for our health, and for the amazing things we can still achieve in life.
It's absolutely crucial to spend time cultivating gratitude.
With hypnotherapy and mind coaching, we really can train the brain to focus on the positives, the ‘goods,’ rather than the negatives by practicing gratitude.
What is hypnosis?
As an award-winning, fully qualified, and accredited hypnotherapist, I can say that hypnosis is a very powerful modality to help you make gratitude a daily practice.
Hypnosis is a safe and natural state of relaxation with an increased level of awareness during which you are not asleep and are fully in control. You will experience a pleasant state of mind with increased attention and focus. The hypnotic state is similar to some moments in your life when you are daydreaming or fully absorbed in a specific activity like reading, for example.
There is absolutely nothing to fear as therapeutic and clinical hypnosis is totally different from stage and entertainment hypnosis and as you remain in control, you will never be asked to do anything foolish or against your will. For the hypnotherapy session to be successful, the hypnotherapist must have your consent, collaboration and full commitment as the purpose is to help you reach a feeling of being more in charge and in control of your life.
While in a relaxed state of mind, new information can make its way into the subconscious, which transforms old beliefs and thought patterns. Hypnosis delves into your subconscious mind to plant positive thoughts and suggestions, which can create meaningful and lasting changes in your thought process. Hypnosis replaces the old with the new. Changing your thinking will change your beliefs, fears, desires, habits, and anything that creates resistance when achieving new things.
It is not a passive process. You are actively participating by communicating your goals and what has previously held you back in the past. These goals are to be truly yours, no matter what you desire to obtain or achieve. If you are trying to satisfy social pressure, then hypnotherapy will not help you. The process is about you, your cooperation, your consent, and your participation.
More and more of us are beginning to understand how important the subconscious (or unconscious) mind is in both helping and sabotaging our efforts to change and be happy. It is widely accepted that most of what we do and what we think is directed by the subconscious. In effect, we spend most of the day on autopilot, our past experiences shaping our responses, moment to moment.
When working with a qualified hypnotherapist, you will learn to make gratitude a new habit. It will then become more natural for you to cultivate what we call ‘an attitude of gratitude.'
As a hypnotherapist, I believe I work in a profession that is fantastically placed to help people align with what they really desire in life, appreciate themselves and see their true potential.
What is mind coaching?
I like very much The International Coach Federation's definition of coaching in general:
"Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential."
Mind coaching is NOT me telling you what to do with your life or how to live your life. Mind coaching is you getting really honest with yourself and realizing that there are areas in your life you want to improve to get the life you are longing for. It can be described as a trance-free intervention and a process that encourages you to have a preference for action over thinking. It gives you the tools to step in, get out there and do the work needed to unlock your potential and get the life you want. It is a client-centred approach that requires you to take an active role in the programmes we build together to help you reach your goals.
As you work on your mindset with the help of mind coaching, gratitude will become a new programme and a new way of living.
Now all this shows you how powerful hypnotherapy and mind coaching are to delete all those used and outdated programmes and limiting beliefs and replace them with more positive and beneficial ones to help you increase a general sense of wellbeing by cultivating gratitude in your life.
Gratitude has definitely become a part of my daily life!
Hope this gives you a better understanding of what gratitude is, how it contributes to our general well-being and how hypnotherapy and mind coaching can help you become more grateful on a daily basis.
Nadija Bajrami, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
French by birth, Nadija has lived in Scotland for 7 years and has traveled the world. After recovering from some serious health issues, Nadija had a wake-up call and came to Ireland to find her path. She has been living in Dublin since 2017.
Nadija is an empowerment specialist and holds a double diploma in Hypnotherapy, Mind Coaching, and online therapy.
She is dedicated to helping her clients get empowered, supercharge their confidence and self-esteem, overcome their limiting beliefs as well as manage anxiety, and symptoms of traumatic experiences and help people on their grief and healing journey through her therapy, coaching, and spiritual work.
