Photo by Lucio Patone on Unsplash
It was after midnight when we dropped our few bags in the entry of our new home. I put my four small children to bed on the makeshift mattresses on the floor and turned on the small heater in the very cold room. I peered into the kitchen to find a blank room with red tile and plumbing where the sink should be. The bathroom was neon blue with no toilet, a hose for a shower head, a small tiled wall that created a sort of tub, and a broken sink.
I took a deep sigh, feelings of overwhelm filling my body. On the one hand, I loved adventure and the thrill of a new challenge, but at the same time this situation felt like way too much. I knew that moving halfway across the globe to a new country and a new life and a new job wouldn’t be easy, but at this moment, exchanging my beautiful historic American home for this old, broken-down apartment was proving to be more than I could handle.
The next morning, I searched through my bags for a scrap of fabric and a black marker. I scrolled out the phrase: “Make gratitude and joy your default.” I strung it up in my kitchen, where I would see it the most. Tears streamed down my face as I took in my new reality. This place needed a lot of work to become a home, and all I wanted was to go back to the little house in America we had all loved so much. Something deep inside told me that I would need to cultivate gratitude in order to survive in this new place, but I didn’t know how much it would positively change my life.
The Benefits of Cultivating Gratitude
Making gratitude a default takes time and practice, but the benefits of this habit are enormous. In fact, the advantages of cultivating appreciation directly counteract the effects of stress on the body caused by moving cross-culturally. Studies show that expressing thanks lowers stress, decreases anxiety and depression, improves sleep and immunity, creates connection with others, and can actually help us live a healthier, happier life.
Lowers Stress
Practicing gratitude reduces the level of cortisol in the body, which benefits the heart and balances the autonomic nervous system. Regularly engaging this tool helps to decrease long term stress and improves resiliency over time.
Decreases Anxiety and Depression
Keeping a gratitude journal or expressing your gratitude to someone else calms the amygdala, effectively soothing the fight or flight response to perceived threats. A calmer amygdala rewires the brain to prevent minor stress from triggering severe emotional reactions, effectively decreasing fear and anxiety. When we experience or express gratitude, neurotransmitters cause an increase in activity in the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain that manages negative emotions like guilt and shame, which are powerful symptoms of depression. The ability to more easily regulate strong emotions gives our brains the ability to settle into a calm, relaxed state, stabilizing our nervous system.
Grows a Positive Personal Mindset
Cultivating gratitude can help improve your mood and helps to support the brain in creating a positive mindset, making it easier to resist dwelling on emotions like envy, resentment, and jealousy, which create toxic cycles of negative self-talk.
Improves the Immune System and Sleep
Chronic stress prevents the body from healing and increases inflammation. Experiencing gratitude releases dopamine and oxytocin, which allow the body to produce more protective antibodies and white blood cells—aiding the body in fighting off infections, allowing you to recover more quickly, and increasing the quality of your sleep.
Improves Connection with Others
Expressing appreciation for another person, culture, or experience releases oxytocin, a bonding hormone, which allows us to connect to others in natural and stronger ways, giving us a sense of increased safety, trust, and community.
Increases Life Expectancy
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researchers conducted a study which found that the benefits of gratitude are consistent between both eastern and western cultures. They found that exercising regular gratitude lowers feelings of isolation and loneliness, strengthens relationships with others, reduces feelings of social anxiety and anger, and overall enhances well-being and happiness. Happier people are more motivated to take care of themselves and others and are more likely to have regular medical appointments and take time to exercise and eat well. Gratitude helps with relationships and social support, which all contribute to longer and healthier lives.
5 Suggestions to Try for Yourself
Intentionally cultivating gratitude so that you can benefit in everyday life can feel like a big task, but incorporating one or two of these small changes into your daily and weekly rhythms can help you build overall resilience. Try out these five suggestions for expressing thanks in the small things, and little by little, you will begin to see transformation.
Start a gratitude journal. Take a few deep breaths and think about your day. Then take five minutes to write out three things that you appreciated. If possible, share them with someone around you.
Take a walk in nature. Pause in a place that is quiet and filled with trees or grass, flowers or a sandy beach and take in your surroundings. What do you notice? What surprises you about things you see? Can you hear anything? Can you smell anything? Close your eyes and appreciate the moment you had in this place.
Write a thank-you note. Take a few minutes to write a thank-you note once a week to someone in your life. It could be a text message or a note left on their desk. Just appreciate something about them or something they have done for you lately. Be sincere.
Box Breath. Sit comfortably in a chair with your feet on the ground. Close your eyes, and breathe in for six counts. Hold your breath for four counts. Breath out for six counts. Hold your breath for four counts. Repeat this breath pattern five times. Notice how you feel in your body. Take a moment to express gratitude for lungs that can breathe, a heart that can beat, and a body that can move as you need it to.
A Random act of kindness. Be on the lookout every week for something you can do that is surprisingly kind to people around you. It can be as simple as thanking a cashier, giving money to a poor person, holding a door for someone doing an errand, complimenting a stranger, or bringing a treat to a friend and their kids.
These simple practices became part of our everyday lives in those early years of living abroad. The kids and I spent hours in our yard or in the neighbor’s yards, looking at the trees, cultivating wonder and gratitude for the simplest things: the way the light streams through the olive branches in the late afternoon, the child that fell asleep after school up on the wall between our houses, the fragrant herbs carefully planted all around the front gate, and the small pears that grew on the tree in the corner of the yard that made just the perfect arrangement on the dining room table, both fragrant and simply beautiful.
As our bodies began to relax into our new surroundings, the love and connection we felt for our new country grew and we learned to give and receive thanks for the experiences we were having each day. We began to build new connections with local friends. It became easier to laugh at ourselves when we made linguistic or cultural mistakes.
As with most things, the small seeds of joy and gratitude grew into deep understanding and love for that place and it deeply changed us. I will forever be grateful for the years we spent there and for the connection we all still have to that house, the neighborhood, the village, and the people.
Take a few minutes to watch this video and soak in the simple beauties of life, letting any feelings of gratitude wash over you. You can also find additional research and resources on gratitude here.