Gratitude is a gift of life! A gift that’s continually available and unwrapped simply through being touched emotionally and remaining consciously appreciative of what you’re experiencing. Gratitude is often envisioned as taking inventory of your life, counting and reflecting upon the “good” stuff you encounter or possess. Undoubtedly, this is an aspect of gratitude.

Studies demonstrate that keeping a gratitude journal to document activities, objects and people you appreciate or are thankful for is an effective method to feel better both physically and emotionally, as well as to reduce feelings of isolation and increase feelings of optimism.

However, gratitude is much more than an accounting exercise to convince yourself of life’s value. Instead, a richer understanding of gratitude reveals it to be a robust attitude to cultivate throughout your lifetime.

The poet David Whyte reminds us that “Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to even take one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege; that we are miraculously part of something rather than nothing.”

David Steindl-Rast: Stop, look and go

Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, has devoted his life to exploring and promoting the healing qualities of gratitude. His YouTube video, “A Good Day,” has been viewed more than 1.5 million times. It beautifully captures images of simple daily activities that make life a gift, engendering a sense of appreciation and thankfulness if only you pay attention to them.

He expands gratefulness to not only those times when you take stock of your life, but espouses that a bigger and better goal is to live your life gratefully and experience every moment fully. He illustrates developing this way of being as similar to how children are taught to cross a busy street. To safely cross and live life gratefully requires you to “stop, look and go.”

“Stop” is to slow life down so you can be more acutely aware of what is occurring. Becoming quiet allows you to consciously be aware of the small qualities and aspects of this miraculous existence that are laid out before you. “Look” is to open your senses to experience the glorious wonder of all that is life. There is no end to appreciating what is available before you, around you and within you. Take it all in and hold it with a sense of wonder and awe, this miracle called life.

“Go” is the critical third step and asks you to respond now and do something with whatever life offers. With a sense of appreciation and thankfulness, recognize that this moment has provided you with an opportunity to engage and participate more fully in the marvel of life.

Nonetheless, Brother Steindl-Rast is realistic in acknowledging that life events and experiences can be painful and difficult. Most people find gratefulness challenging at such times, and lose their sense of awe, appreciation and wonder.

The key to reclaiming a grateful life isn’t through a redoubled singular focus on the “positive stuff,” as you accumulate and count the objects and events you cherish and enjoy. Instead, the more extensive experience of gratefulness necessitates meeting and being with whatever arises, in order to respond consciously during inevitable complex and difficult challenges. Responding wisely rather than reacting blindly embodies Steindl-Rast’s vision of his directive to “Go.”

Embracing gratefulness during challenging life events isn’t easy, as I can attest from my career as a clinical psychologist. Specializing in treating midlife and older clients, it was clear that engendering gratefulness can be easily lost during times of pain, loss and sorrow. Most patients who arrived at my consulting room experienced this challenge, and had already initially sought to eliminate the causes through a path of determined pursuit of the magic beans that would inoculate them from the pains and sorrows of life—only to experience continual disappointment.

When the attempt to avoid the inevitable challenges of living failed, they often tried to convince themselves that life was still good by accumulating more and more objects and events that would invalidate their struggles. It was only when failed attempts to escape life’s challenges were exhausted that they sought professional assistance.

The reality is that there is no way to transcend this human existence, a life that Buddhism accurately characterizes as comprising 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. There is also no denying that the Aging years increase the probability of experiencing pain, loss and sorrow, which can easily rob you of the generative attitude of gratitude. Without embracing an ongoing sense of gratefulness, life can seem like a burdensome chore on a mournful protest through your remaining years.

But I’ve found another way to meet the inevitable challenges of aging with acceptance, resilience, and importantly, gratitude. That way of being is the practice of Mindfulness.

Applying mindfulness in 3 ways

What I found so powerful while applying mindfulness to life’s aging years, with its inevitable ups and downs, is that it invites you to consciously live this life, your precious life, in the most healthy, satisfying and meaningful way possible.

Mindfulness offers the possibility of a compassionate way of being during your midlife and aging years, by inviting you to create an engaged and vibrant personal connection to three aspects of time’s inescapable presence. Mindful aging mirrors Steindl-Rast’s directives, which naturally unfold as renewed gifts of gratitude:

Awareness

The first invitation of aging mindfully is to maintain your awareness that there is no stopping time. Mindfulness doesn’t claim to magically create or extend time. That is impossible, for as Napoleon reminds us, “You can ask for anything you want except time.” Awareness satisfies Steindl-Rast’s imperative to “Stop,” slow down and be conscious of the flow of time, so you don’t miss its unique individual moments.

Experience

The second invitation concerns your experience of time—figuratively and literally, to wake up to the unfolding nature of each moment. A 2010 Harvard study found that, on average, we are not paying attention to what we’re experiencing 47 percent of the time!

This is a critical finding, because attention turns out to be the brain’s boss—all cognitive and emotional activities follow where you put your attention. As the Jedi master, Yoda, succinctly concludes: “Your focus determines your reality.”

And this inattention to the task at hand doesn’t just leave us basking in blissful fantasies or memories, with the study’s frank conclusion aptly summarized in its title, “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind.” We end up missing our life, missing it moment by moment, which leaves us feeling dissatisfied and unhappy, with gratitude being lost along the way!

Mindfulness invites us to take charge of our attention by training our focus to be present where we want it, when we want it, moment by moment. Experiencing the present moment satisfies Steindl-Rast’s second step of gratitude to “Look.”

Relationship

The third invitation of aging mindfully involves establishing a new relationship with time. To be aware and present during pleasurable moments, such as while sitting on a tropical beach sipping a favourite beverage, likely isn’t that difficult for most people. Still, mindfulness recognizes that life is not all blissfully enchanting!

Therefore, the task becomes learning how to be in relationship with the totality of life, including more complex and challenging experiences. It doesn’t mean you must like or enjoy such times, because some of life is undeniably painful. The quality of your relationship with each moment will depend not so much on what occurs, but critically, on your attitudes and beliefs toward it. Learning how to meet these inevitable provocative events will, in no small measure, determine the overall quality of your life.

Relationship is the key to Steindl-Rast’s prescription for a fuller sense of gratitude, as it reveals the opportunity this miraculous world presents at each moment you’re alive. The gift of responding by meeting whatever arises, including the painful challenges, through your human assets and capabilities—this is what you can be grateful for.

Mindfulness acknowledges these three invitations through the process of paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, to all you experience with an attitude of acceptance and non-judgment. Mindfulness doesn’t promise to transcend your human existence; it lays no claim to creating a blissful existence. Instead, it offers a proven learning process to transform your awareness, your experience and your relationship to moment-to-moment events and encounters, especially those of a more challenging and painful nature. This, then, refreshes or even reclaims your sense of gratitude.

Teaching mindfulness

Since retiring from my clinical practice in 2017, I’ve volunteered to teach mindfulness to hospice bereavement and palliative care patients. Most patients have been between 50 and 89 years old, with many never having even heard of mindfulness before enrollment.

The benefits expressed by participants have been very satisfying. Even with their considerable personal losses, they’ve found ways to meet their sorrow and pain, while also finding ways to experience their life openly and wholeheartedly with a felt sense of gratitude.

To be clear, they don’t escape the inevitable pain accompanying their losses, but alongside such challenges, they can meet all that life presents. Common evaluative comments include feeling “grounded; more peaceful; deeply grateful; confident; hopeful; kinder to myself; appreciative and accepting of life; settled; gained valuable new tools for not only my grief but my life in general.”

The benefits initially unearthed with mindfulness endure with practice. Rod Butters, 58, is a Hall of Fame Canadian chef, restaurateur and author based in the beautiful Okanagan Valley of British Columbia with his dog Olive. Since a heart attack in 2014, he’s been practicing mindfulness and enjoying its continually unfolding benefits: “As a Chef/Restaurateur of 4 award-winning operations, stress in all forms is a consistent part of my day, every day. The practice of mindfulness has certainly helped combat the physical and mental challenges of my career. I can appreciate with gratitude the moments of my day, and because of that, my heart is healthier in all ways. It has without a doubt saved my businesses and my life.”

Not a bad return for the investment of mindfulness within yourself! It’s undoubtedly a gift at any time in life. Still, during your aging years, mindfulness practices graciously offer self-sung serenades, encouraging you to lovingly court and support yourself with a sense of gratitude throughout those moonlit years. As the 13-century mystic Meister Eckhart wisely concludes, “If the only prayer you ever said was ‘thank you,’ that would be enough.”

images: Depositphotos

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