What tend to be your most common emotions and thought patterns during the holidays? How often do you slow down to be in the moment? Do you appreciate what you have, or do you tend to wish for more?
Gratitude is a mindset that has the potential to improve your mental health in many ways. This is true all year but the holidays can present a time when there are more things to be grateful for while also being a time of increased expectations, which can lead to disappointment when they’re not met.
Adopting a mindset of gratitude can take effort at first, but it comes with the benefit of helping you to feel comfortable and confident, be more authentic, and get more joy out of life and the holidays, which makes it worth the effort.
What is practicing gratitude?
Practicing gratitude involves giving more attention to what you have in life, rather than letting your worries and things you may be lacking dominate your thoughts.
To practice gratitude, you notice when something good happens and acknowledge that you appreciate it. You build the habit of reflecting on the things in your life – tangible and intangible – that you’re grateful for. This could be rewarding relationships, a major purchase you worked hard to afford, an opportunity you were able to take advantage of, a gift you received (as well as the person who gave it to you) and much more.
When you’re doing something fun, you do your best to enjoy yourself in the moment instead of worrying about the future. This requires being present, which is another way of improving your mental health and enjoying the holidays, which so many people anticipate all year then feel shocked at how quickly they pass by. But being present can help slow them down.
You can also reflect on events from your past that you’re grateful to have experienced, as well as appreciating what you anticipate for the future.
Most people find that their lives improve when they build the habit of practicing gratitude because they’re more optimistic. It’s easy to spend too much time thinking about what you don’t have, ruminating, and feeling regret. Known as negativity bias, this is an instinctive way of thinking that gives more attention to negative experiences. In order to overcome this inherent bias, it’s often necessary to intentionally remind yourself of the positives in your life.
However, being grateful doesn’t mean only having positive thoughts – trying to think like this is practicing toxic positivity and is therefore unhealthy. It’s also impossible. Most thoughts happen spontaneously and there’s very little you can do to control them, so stopping yourself from having negative thoughts is a goal you’re destined to fail at, and trying isn’t good for you. But when you have a gratitude mindset, you can be less affected by negative thoughts because you’re used to directing your energy towards the parts of your life that make you happy. For example, you can feel hurt and disappointed if you invited a friend who is becoming distant to visit and they turned down the invitation, but once you’ve processed the painful emotions (which is necessary) you can comfort yourself by thinking of the other relationships you’ve been able to maintain. This is easier for those who practice gratitude because they’ve established the habit of giving more of their attention to what they have to be grateful for.
When you take the time to consider what you’re grateful for (past, present and future) and recognise the positivity in your life, you’re likely to be more mentally healthy – resilient, optimistic, proactive, willing to take risks, confident, and comfortable being your authentic self.
How gratitude can be neglected during Christmas
Despite the holidays being promoted as the ‘most wonderful time of the year’, plenty of people – including those who enjoy the holidays – struggle to be grateful for what they have without desiring for more or wishing that their lives were different.
Because the holidays come with higher than usual expectations, they can encourage many of the emotions that make feeling grateful difficult. These include:
- Envy
Envy is being resentful that you lack what others possess so you wish that you had more and/or they had less to make you more equal. Christmas is a time when peoples’ assets are on display through their decorations, the gifts they give, the efforts they’re capable of putting into celebrating, the people who visit them, how these people behave and more. If you wish that you had more, it can be easy to feel envious of others and forget what you have to be grateful for.
- Materialistic
Being materialistic is unfortunately common all year, but it often grows and peaks during the holidays. So much of the celebrations are characterised by stuff: presents, food, decorations, outfits – the list is almost endless. Most people do enjoy indulging and exchanging gifts, but when the holiday becomes characterised by purchases (especially those that are driven by measuring up to others) much of the joy is lost and you become focused on what you’re lacking or compensating for it, which is a mindset that prevents gratitude.
- Cynicism
It’s common to be cynical about the holidays and think of them as only a marketing ploy. While there can be truth to this, especially for people who fall victim to materialisation, this perspective overlooks the opportunities for the holidays to be a more enjoyable time of year where you’re able to reconnect with people you don’t often spend time with, so you miss out on chances to have enjoyable experiences you could feel grateful for.
- Entitlement
Although people tend to think of entitlement as being experienced by children, especially at Christmas, adults can be entitled as well. This can be less noticeable if they aren’t materialistic, but having excessively high expectations, behaving as if others should act only in ways they think are acceptable, and believing their emotions should take priority are common ways for adults to practice entitlement.
When you’re feeling entitled, you’re like a black hole that will take in whatever is thrown into it without ever being satisfied. But gratitude can be the antidote to entitlement because instead of believing that you need and deserve more, you aim to be content with what you have – you acknowledge what is lacking, but you also recognise what you do have and accept that this may be enough.
- Stress
Many people feel higher levels of stress at Christmas since there’s so much more to do. Stress is characterised by feeling that you don’t have the internal and/or external resources you need to meet your responsibilities – lacking time, energy and money are the most common causes of holiday stress.
Stress can easily lead to resentment, even for what you have, such as being stressed at all the gifts to wrap or having too many people to cook for. It’s difficult to feel grateful when you’re worried about getting things done and meeting expectations.
- Depression
Christmas can emphasise what some people are lacking and cause depression. This is especially common for those with few close relationships and among low-income families. Depression can block out all positive emotions, leaving you feeling that there’s nothing about your life to be happy about or grateful for.
The driving force of these emotions is often beliefs about what the holidays ‘should’ be like instead of making them your own. Rather than measuring success by your own standards, whatever they may be, you only feel that things are going well when they meet potentially impossible standards you might not have the ability to control. Common Christmas ‘shoulds’ that people fall victim to include: “I should have done more”, “Everyone should be having a better time”, “I should be happier”, and “We should be able to have a family dinner without anyone yelling”, just to name a few.
This makes feeling gratitude more difficult. When things go well you can feel like you’re just getting your minimum expectations met while feeling disappointed is far more likely since your standards are raised; you’re asking more of yourself and what you want might not come easily.
These shoulds often exist because of comparison. Christmas is a time when comparison flourishes. Although social media makes comparison possible all year, holiday celebrations can ignite this tendency.
Comparison isn’t inherently negative since it can motivate you to elevate your standards and put in more effort than you would if you weren’t comparing yourself to others. However, it can become unhealthy if you believe that there are winners and losers and you win by outperforming others. You can also judge yourself against your own expectations and feel like a loser for failing to meet them. If your expectations are unrealistic – which is likely if you’re comparing yourself against the polished images you see online – you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and feeling like a failure.
When you compare yourself to others, instead of feeling grateful for what you have – even if it’s not perfect – you’re more likely to feel upset about what you don’t have and believe that getting more is necessary to being satisfied. And if you do feel grateful, it’s likely gratitude for winning, which is a risky source of gratitude since you don’t always have control over your ability to win, while also being inauthentic since winning usually means meeting someone else’s standards instead of your own.
However, believing that you need more to be happy isn’t entirely your fault. Marketing relies on people thinking that they don’t have enough, but if they spend a little more money, they’ll get what they’re missing. People who are already satisfied with what they have aren’t very good customers. This message exists throughout the year but it becomes more common and more convincing at Christmas.
Believing that you need more to be happy and worrying that you’re not capable of achieving what’s necessary to improve your situation are painful ways of thinking and feeling. But if you become aware of the negative messages you may be sending yourself, or simply the lack of positive messages, and choose to shift your attention and appreciation to what you do have by practicing gratitude, you can improve your experience of the holidays and extend this positivity throughout the year.
How to adopt a mindset of gratitude
Gratitude is valuable all year but the holidays can be a good time to start building the habit of practicing it. Because the holidays are a break from routines for most people, it can be easier to start doing something new because you’re more aware of how you’re spending your time instead of operating on autopilot.
Practicing gratitude doesn’t have to take long – which is good since many people are very busy at this time of year – because much of the work is done internally. As you’re going about your day, occasionally recognise some of the positives in your life, either what you’re currently enjoying or what you’re glad is a relative constant. When you’re doing something fun, acknowledge that you’re having a good time, either internally or by telling others how you’re feeling. Let people you care for know what you appreciate about them and why you’re glad they’re a part of your life.
When you find yourself wishing that you had more or thinking that things should be different – that you should have made a bigger effort, that more of your relatives should be able to get along with each other, that you should be happier, etc. – ask yourself if you really feel this way or if comparison and unrealistic expectations are causing to have these beliefs. Also ask yourself if what you’re wishing for is realistic – in general and for you specifically.
Because being grateful involves looking at the reality of your situation, it can help you break away from unrealistic beliefs about what you should have and need to be happy and satisfied. You can acknowledge what would make you happier, yet still appreciate what you’re lucky enough to have in your life.
Being grateful is an invitation to stop focusing on the ways you wish your life was different and instead putting your attention on what you have that you appreciate. You don’t have to be happy all the time to be grateful, and some of the things that make you the happiest will also take a lot of energy and even cause heartache, especially close relationships with people you love. Children can be the source of immense gratitude and happiness while also causing untold stress, irritation and exhaustion.
Practicing gratitude at Christmas is a powerful way to tell yourself that you have and are enough. You don’t need to buy or do more to enjoy yourself – you can do this if you want to but you already have things in your life that you’re grateful for.
When you feel grateful, you invite yourself to be happy with what you have right now. Things can always improve, but you don’t tell yourself to wait until they do before you’ll be satisfied. You accept that others will have more than you and be better than you at some things, but those things might not be important to you. And even if they are, you’re in the process of bettering yourself and can be proud of where you are now, especially as it compares to where you were before. Life for most people will always involve at least some forms of improvement, so being grateful for what you have is very powerful.
When you choose to be grateful for what you have instead of letting the ways things could be dominate your thoughts, you can appreciate life more. This is especially meaningful at Christmas when there’s so much to be grateful for but still plenty to wish for.
