Resilience Resources: Rejoicing (otherwise known as practicing gratitude)

One of the great things about resilience is that it can be nurtured.  Some people might seem more naturally resilient (because of their personality, for example), but others of us need a bit of help.  There are a number of practices that can help build our resilience.

The first one I want to talk about is rejoicing.

I've used the word 'rejoicing', partly because it begins with the letter 'r' and I couldn't resist a bit of alliteration, but more importantly, because is an echo of Brene Brown's metaphor for joy which she talks about in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection.  In her book, she makes the distinction between happiness and joy. It's in the section she calls 'Guide post #4'. She suggests that happiness is the emotion that we feel associated with a key event, like a holiday or a celebration. We can invest a lot of hope that those events will 'fill us up' with all the happiness we need to get through the day-to-day business of living. This does not help us to be resilient, because once those events are over, the happiness that is tied to them also diminishes. Remember that flat feeling when your holiday is over and you have to go back to work?

In comparison to happiness, joy is the more sustaining emotional resource we find in our day-to-day experiences. To illustrate this, Brene Brown uses the metaphor of fairy lights to talk about the small moments of joy that are strung in suspended and light up the darkness.

I love this metaphor.

Every day, I am on the look out every day for fairy lights and their equivalents. My favourite is the glittering flecks that are embedded in the non-slip flooring of the stairs at the station where I work. They sparkle even in on the dull and rainy days. They remind me that there are opportunities to find joy right under my feet, even when I am crowded, even when I am rushing, even when I am tired.  Even when I don't feel very happy.

Nice metaphor. How does it help with resilience?

Brene Brown suggests that one way we can cultivate joy is to practice gratitude.  There is a wealth of research about gratitude and well being in the field of positive psychology. In thinking about this topic, I read some of the papers, like Wood et al.'s (2010) overview of the various ways that gratitude can be measured and some of the simple 'interventions' that can help us to practice gratitude.

Interventions are like tasks that we can do that we might not otherwise. Examples include keeping a gratitude journal, contributing to projects like a gratitude wall, writing a letter to express gratitude to a particular person.

In a more recent paper by Jane Taylor Wilson (2016) she explored the relationship between gratitude and resilience in relation to student learning. I was struck by one conclusion she drew from her results: the students who reported increased focus in their learning were those who were prompted to practice gratitude, with a specific focus on their learning.  It seems that what we are grateful for makes a difference to what we become more resilient about.

So here are some questions for reflection:

• How far can you identify with the difference between happiness and joy?
• What practices help you cultivate gratitude?
• What new practices might you try? Or are there different things that you could think about being grateful for?
• Where can you find your daily doses of joy?

If you've got suggestions for other gratitude practices, please let me know by leaving a comment!