Want to feel great? Try gratitude

If it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month or even your year, it’s easy to feel like nothing in your life is worth being grateful for. But research shows that intentional gratitude – acknowledging and celebrating the good things in your life and actively thanking the people around you – is one of the best ways to boost your mood and improve your mental wellbeing.

Why be grateful?

As the saying goes, it’s the little things that matter. This couldn’t be more true than when it comes to gratitude. When our mental health is not at its best, a setback or negative interaction can affect your mood and outlook – but gratitude can affect your mood and outlook.  Redirecting our mind toward gratitude on a regular basis can help us to deliberately address our brain’s bias toward focusing on negative experiences and insert more moments of positive emotion into our day.

Multiple studies have shown that simply appreciating small things in your life can improve your mood and general outlook, and that the simple act of thanking others can improve their outlook (and your relationship), too.

Gratitude works wonders in both personal and professional settings: thanking family members for helping you out or letting them know how much you enjoy spending quality time with them and thanking teammates or employees for the work they do. Not only can this significantly improve your day but theirs as well.

How to practice intentional gratitude

As with any practice, being consistently grateful requires good habits, repeated over time. While it’s a great idea to thank people in the moment, remembering to be grateful for experiences or material things sometimes needs a prompt.

Great ways to grow your gratitude include:

• Keeping a gratitude journal. Dedicate some time at the end of every day to sit with your thoughts and write down what you’re grateful for that day (download yours below!).
• Set aside time for meditation. For some, this might be time with a higher power they believe in. For others it could just be quiet reflection.
• Mindfulness. Being mindful allows us to be fully present in moments of happiness and really feel the gratitude for what we are experiencing.
• Catching yourself before you fall into negative thought patterns. While it’s normal and natural to experience stress, anger, disappointment or sadness, these feelings are temporary. Feeling those feelings and letting them pass is an important part of a healthy emotional life.

Reach out for support

Just like physical illnesses, the treatment and specialist care a person might need for one mental illness may not be suited to the next person.

As the largest private provider of mental health care in Australia, we are dedicated to making a real difference in the lives of those we treat, with whatever pathway they need.

We offer a range of services designed to support people experiencing mental health issues associated with financial stress, including anxiety, depression, and a wide range of other conditions.

We encourage you to reach out to our expert team who can assist you in finding the right avenue for your mental health care journey.