How can we feel grateful when there’s so much to feel angry about in the world?

This is the third of a series of four blog posts on mental health during a climate emergency. If you want to skip ahead, you can download my summary of the series when you subscribe to receive my blog posts to your inbox.

Can you picture the last time you felt really, truly grateful for something?

Perhaps it was the kind of gratitude that filled you up so full that it began to overflow. Or maybe the kind that was strong enough to break through the most terrible of days with a small glimmer of hope. Or that sprung up out of nowhere and buoyed you up as you went about your day.

Isn’t gratitude the most delicious feeling?

*When was the last time you felt really, truly grateful?*

I saw my parents for the first time since lockdown began a couple of weeks ago. We had dinner in the garden and my Dad opened his belated father’s day gift in person.

As we went for a walk together and stayed up talking through the early hours of the morning I felt four months of anxious lockdown-induced worrying begin to melt away.

Gratitude is such a powerful antidote to anxiety because it connects us with a knowledge we can sometimes lose sight of- that we are the recipients of goodness, even in the midst of crisis.

Where fear causes us to contract, protect, and hold tight, gratitude opens us up and fills our hearts.

Gratitude is clinically proven to dramatically boost mental health generally, and yields a variety of powerful positive effects emotionally, materially, and interpersonally.

And in case your heart is sinking because gratitude isn’t a feeling that comes naturally to you, gratitude is also something you can practice in order to cultivate more of it in your life, and in doing so increase your base ‘happiness level’ by as much as 25%.

So this third posting on working with Eco-Anxiety is on how to grow a gratitude practice in your life.

Gratitude amidst a Global Pandemic

This week I took this photo of some new road markings outside one of the hospitals near where I live in Sheffield.

*Celebrating the gift of our National Health Service.*

Back in March Annemarie Plas, a Dutch national living in London, led the way in expressing gratitude to the NHS by beginning the Thursday evening ritual of clapping for our NHS.

The idea was quickly adopted by the nation as a natural response to the suffering caused by the pandemic. There’s nothing like the thought of losing what is most precious to us to foster a greater sense of gratitude for those that help protect it.

I felt a bit awkward at first, stepping out onto my street and hoping I wouldn’t be the only one standing like a lemon whilst next doors’ curtains twitched. But within a week or two, it became a routine I really looked forward to.

A chance to see neighbours, safely participate in something communal, and to show some small sign of the appreciation I felt for the key workers we depend on.

*Uncertain times remind us just how much we need each other.*

Because when we are at our most vulnerable we need gratitude as much as we need the actual gift we are thankful for. To simply be reminded that people are good and that there is goodness even in the darkest of times.

It keeps us going.

Growing Gratitude

But gratitude is a complex practice. After ten weeks of clapping for the NHS Annemarie brought the ritual to a close because she felt that it was becoming hijacked for political purposes.

She created a boundary around the weekly claps before they were ruined.

Gratitude is such a pure experience, it’s not surprising it can become vulnerable to being hijacked.

For example, have you ever caught yourself feeling grateful for something, and then, just at that moment of realisation become aware of a dark voice which kind of taints it?

Something along the lines of…

Well don’t get too comfortable, it won’t last long.

Don’t you feel guilty for enjoying this when others can’t?

Haven’t you got more important things to be getting on with?

As I talked about in my first eco-anxiety blog post, anxiety comes barging in attempting to protect us and reminding us of all the reasons we shouldn’t let our guard down.

Because to really savour what we have is to also make ourselves vulnerable to the experience of losing it. That’s precisely why vulnerability researcher Dr. Brene Brown, of whom I am a big fan, describes the joy of gratitude as ‘the most terrifying of emotions’.

Experiencing gratitude involves admitting that we are not in control of much of what we most value, and also that we are infinitely indebted to others for much of what we have.

*Much of what we rely on every day depends on others.*

Gratitude and Guilt

Even a simple trip to the shops shows us that whilst we may have earned the money to buy that food, we did not grow it, nor build the roads that transported it, nor negotiated the price that made it affordable for us.

It can be an uncomfortable revelation to realise that so much of what we have ‘earned’ is far beyond our sphere of influence. In climate terms, and for many of us living in the West, this often translates into a guilty awareness of our carbon intensive lifestyles.

Guilt can be a powerful agent for change when we are convicted of something we are doing that does not allign with how we wish to live in the world, but to know that most of our entire way of life is unsustainable can leave us ashamed and disempowered.

In contrast, gratitude can help us truly savour what we have, which in turn places us in a better position to let go of excess and share more with others.

So, as wonderful as it can be when gratitude spontaneously rises up within us, cultivating gratefulness in our lives does require a degree of intention so that it doesn’t get crowded out by our fear, guilt or our need to feel in control.

Studying Gratitude

Have you ever found yourself in the presence of someone who suffers from a bad case of chronic ingratitude?

Someone who takes great delight in pointing out how nothing is ever good enough, and in ‘helping’ anyone who might be naive or deluded enough to dwell on such a frivolous emotion.

And have you ever noticed that they’re kind of hard to argue with? There’s nothing like justifying why gratitude is a legitimate response to kind of kill the mood…

This is one of the reasons why I love the book, ‘Thanks’, by Robert A. Emmons.

*Taking plenty of notes from Robert A. Emmon’s groundbreaking book, ‘Thanks’.*

Emmons is an academic who has spent many years studying gratitude, and he makes a truly compelling case for gratefulness without falling into the trap of preaching about why we ought to feel it (another good way to see gratitude off for good!)

Emmons describes gratitude as an attitude, and also as ‘an emotion, a mood, a moral virtue, a habit, a motive, a personality trait, a coping response, and even a way of life’ (p. 4).

His statistics on how a gratitude practice can improve not only our quality of life but also that of those around us, are incredible. Practicing gratitude can, for example, add as much as nine years to your lifespan.

But his advice for reaping the wonderful benefits of gratitude in our lives is really simple.

My favourite of his suggestions is to spend a just few minutes each day writing a gratitude journal. I am not always disciplined in doing so, but when I do make a note of ten things I’m grateful for from the day, I experience a profound and virtually instant improvement in my mood.

It’s like putting glasses on and seeing my life from a different and much more enjoyable perspective.

*Keeping a daily gratitude journal to boost happiness levels by as much as 25%.*

Our brains are wired to notice the negative and threatening things in our life because this is an instinct that has kept our species safe over many thousands of years. But this lands us with an often unbalanced perspective on just how much of our lives are overflowing with goodness.

It’s not that we are ungrateful as a species, but that we are very good at adjusting to circumstances and so improvements in our lives quickly become the ‘new normal’, meaning that feelings of gratitude fade relatively quickly.

So as I write my gratitude journal in the evenings, I am rebalancing my perspective so that I actually see my life more as it truly is.

With regular intention to focus on gratitude, rather than just waiting for the feeling to come naturally, we can also begin to strengthen the gratitude neuropathways in our brains so that we are increasingly predisposed to notice and savour gratitude.

Essentially, we begin to more naturally experience an increased sense of gratitude, and all the benefits it brings.

Resentful Activism

One of the most interesting parts of Emmons’ findings is that those who cultivate gratitude are more likely to give back to others. They are also far less likely to experience resentment in doing so, which is an essential insight for any of us whose work involves regular giving out to the world.

The environmental movement, for example, is plagued by resentment.

Resentment at governments for ignoring the science. At big business for putting profit above people. Sometimes even at friends, family and colleagues for not doing more.

We are often caricatured as angry activists shaking our fists at the system but without a clear idea of what we’re fighting for. Partly that’s because it’s how the media diminishes the power of our message, but partly because it is true.

We are carrying the weight of climate change on our shoulders, often feeling isolated and very scared. Our anger is justified, and it is a powerful force for change.

*Anger at the climate emergency is justified and a powerful force for change.*

And yet, when anger becomes resentment, this power is lost.

Because resentment doesn’t make for a compelling invitation for others to join the fight, and ultimately resentment reduces our resilience when things don’t go the way we hoped. Resentment gets in the way of our message to the world.

Abundant Activism

We know that the world needs to halve global emissions by 2030 in order to stand a chance of halting climate change. So with such a tight deadline, it is natural that our activism should focus on outcomes.

But this is why it is actually even more important that we delight in the process of activism in and of itself.

Doing what we do for the world because we would choose to do it, regardless of the outcome, is one of the most helpful ways we can grow our resilience to setbacks.

That’s why writing a poem, painting a picture, grieving the state of the world with a friend, or going for a walk in the local park are just as important as writing to our MPs, switching to a clean energy supplier or cutting out meat from our diets.

In my previous post, On… Eco-Anxiety #2, I advocated for spending more time in the natural world as a means of nourishing our bodies and calming our minds.

Allowing ourselves to be sustained in this way helps cultivate our sense of gratitude towards the natural world so that our work to protect it flows from a place of deep love, rather than fear.

It transforms the arduous task of cutting emissions by a particularly hard deadline into an act of service, an outpouring of gratitude, for all that the planet has given us.

A Challenge for the Week Ahead

Over the next week, I would like to encourage you to take two small actions to cultivate more gratitude in your life.

The first is to write a list of ten things you are grateful for at the end of each day. You might find it difficult to think of ten at first, but be encouraged that this means you are growing your gratitude muscle.

The second is to notice any feelings of gratitude that you might experience when encountering the natural world this week.

It might be a bee that is pollinating the flowers in your garden, the sun shining warm or the rain watering the earth. Perhaps it will be the feel of the wind on your face, the pattern of a leaf, or the taste of some good, fresh food.

Notice, even if it is just the smallest flicker of gratitude, and pause for a few seconds to savour that feeling. You might even want to quietly whisper thank you.

*Savour the beauty of nature, even in something as simple as the pattern of a leaf.*

I have to admit that my gratitude practice has been a bit sloppy recently, so I’m going to be joining you in doing the same!

If you would like to share any thoughts on gratitude with others, please leave a comment below. The world needs more gratitude!

And, if you are enjoying this series on Eco-Anxiety, don’t forget to subscribe to receive my blogs to your inbox if you haven’t already, and to take a look next week for the final blog in the series on Growth.