Important Topics

The Power of Thanksgiving

While gratitude has been long been celebrated as a spiritual and philosophical virtue, psychologists are discovering that an attitude of thanksgiving can also have a powerful, positive impact on psychological well being and family functioning.  The UC Davis School of Psychology and the John Templeton Foundation, for instance, are dedicating personnel and resources toward a longitudinal study of gratitude, its positive effects on personal wellness, and ways to cultivate it.  Business schools like the Graziado School of Business at Pepperdine University are exploring the impact of gratitude on leadership and organizational health.   For parents who are struggling to connect with their young adult, this research has enormous implications–mainly because it’s a simple, easy way to improve family functioning that doesn’t involve expensive professionals!

But since your young adult’s sincerity radar is generally set to “suspicion,” it’s critical to cultivate sincerity prior to effusing gratitude.  That’s the hard part.  Life isn’t always easy.   There’s pain and frustration.  It can be difficult to maintain a spirit of thankfulness when things aren’t going perfectly.  But if you do manage to cultivate a genuinely thankful spirit, all of this well-researched psychological benefit is yours for a couple of easy words: “thank” and “you.”

Here are some tips for cultivating the attitude of gratitude that’s necessary for saying a real, believable “thank you” with, for, and to your young-adult child.

• Journaling: Keep a daily journal of things you’re thankful for.  Write each dated entry as a simple list.  This discipline will help you search the haystack of your life so that you can find and keep the little good things hiding in it.
• Visualization: Go down your list of things you’re thankful for today and, as time permits, close your eyes and visualize each one.  If it’s a person, give him or her a hug or a kiss or a smile in your mind’s eye.  Feel it.  Enjoy it. If it’s a thing, imagine it in detail.
• Personalization: A complete experience of gratitude requires two things: an object—the thing you’re thankful for, and an agent—the person who provides the object.  Sometimes the object and the agent are the same, for instance if you’re thankful to your wife for being such a beautiful, kind wife.  Other times, the object and the agent are different, like when you’re thankful to your own parents for raising such a spectacular person–you!  Or like when you’re thankful to your neighbor for watching your dog when you go on vacation.  If you are a spiritual person, prayer can be a powerful way to express gratitude.   So as you reflect on the various objects of your gratitude, let your mind also go to the agent responsible, and internally acknowledge (at least) or verbally communicate your gratitude to that person.
• Acceptance: It’s true of nearly everything—gifts, massages, meals, hugs, sex, praise—that the better you are at receiving the better you’ll be at giving.  It’s true of gratitude as well.  If you find yourself deflecting other people’s efforts to thank you with a dismissive wave of the hand, a falsely humble headshake, or a blocking phrase like “not at all,” or “it was nothing,” then knock it off!  For everyone to benefit maximally from an act of thanksgiving, that act must be accepted.  If someone lobs a sincere “thanks” your way, do them—and yourself—a favor: look them in the eye, smile, and say, “you’re welcome.”  Enjoy it!  That’s what gratitude is all about, after all—giving, receiving, and enjoying.