The Power of Gratitude

At a recent conference, I reconnected with a lovely, accomplished law professor that I hadn’t seen for awhile and asked her how her law teaching was going. She told me that although she’s now very comfortable in her job, as a full-time working mother of two young kids, she’s feeling overwhelmed, isolated, and feels like she’s just trying to get through each day as it comes.

The feeling of “just surviving” is something I hear from a lot of parents I know.  And believe me…I can relate.

Even though Robby and I have great family support, there have been many moments when I’ve felt overwhelmed and have been in survival mode.  I distinctly remember several years ago when my 2-year-daughter was having an hour long tantrum and all I could do was curl myself up on the couch, hold my hands over my ears and cry.

That was not my best parenting moment. 

It was, however, the best I could do at the time.  The problem with survival mode is that it diminishes our abilities to be in the moment and cherish our interactions with the important people in our lives.

The demands of working full-time and arriving home to family responsibilities can be overwhelming.  The demands for stay-at-home parents can be equally overwhelming.  The period during which parents are raising kids under four can feel like we’re barely keeping our head above water.

This period can also, for many in the sandwich generation, be a time when people are not only caring for their own kids but are also taking care of their own aging parents.  With not enough sleep, too many demands on our time, and a tendency to neglect our own needs, this time can pass without us feeling in control of our lives.

And this feeling can be especially difficult for high achievers…

So I wanted to share how a daily practice of gratitude has helped me climb out of survival mode.

Simple Ways to Incorporate Gratitude into Your Day

Studies show that deliberately incorporating gratitude into your life can radically shift your perspective from overwhelmed and down to happy and hopeful. And the great thing about incorporating gratitude into your daily routine is that it takes very little time and it costs nothing.

The simplest way to start incorporating this into your life is to name three things each day that you are grateful for.

Okay… I’ll start.

Here are three things that I am grateful for right now:

I’m grateful for my wonderful husband and amazing kids. 

I’m grateful that I’m getting such great feedback from all of you on this blog.

I’m grateful that have a job that where I feel valued, I’m surrounded by inspiring colleagues and friends, and I feel like I’m making an important difference in the world.

The key is to find a time each day to incorporate a daily gratitude practice.  So here are some ideas for how you can deliberately create time and space for the practice of naming three gratitudes each day:

• talk about the three things you’re grateful for at breakfast or dinner with your whole family (saying these things out loud is very powerful and it’s lovely to hear other people in your life talk about what they are grateful for too);
• write three things you’re grateful for in a journal;
• reflect as you lay down to sleep at night and identify three things about your day that you’re grateful for (an important benefit to doing it at this time is that this practice will help you calm your mind and may help you get a better sleep!); or
• download a Gratitude Journal app (yep…there’s an app for that!) you can use to track your daily gratitudes in your phone.

One of the benefits of deliberately incorporating gratitude into your day is that it brings you into the moment and lifts you out of survival mode (check out our short survey here if you want to see if you are in survival mode).  Gratitude also creates positive changes within your body (watch this video by Christine Marie Sheldon to see how).

P.S. I circled back with my law professor friend after I wrote this article and she told me that one of the most effective ways that she is coping with overwhelm is by deliberately incorporating gratitude into her life.  So it works!

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