Gratitude

I have been contemplating gratitude today. Is Gratitude a learned response?

Its an emotion that I guess is modeled to us as children, seeing our role models being grateful towards each other and towards us. Taking in that learned response and having it nurtured in us as children, I can see how it would be easy for some and not so easy for others to feel gratitude and express it as such.

If we grew up in environments where we felt unappreciated, unacknowledged there definitely could be a deficit in, both ourselves and the world around us.

That reflection if we do find it difficult to tap into our own gratitude of life within, could open us up to seeing the world through eyes of ignorance, unsatisfied, resentment and lacking appreciation for life in general. Always looking for something to fill up that hole of not liking the world in some way.

There are many ways to develop gratitude. Sometimes the simply measures of thankfulness towards others and experiences we engage in whether it be a positive or negative experience, opens up that core of joy in us that connects us to source. Even being grateful for those experiences we may perceive as negative or in no way helpful to us, there is always something in that connection to life in general that opens us up to be grateful. We may not get our needs met, we may feel the situation fails us, but the bringing together of yourself and another, or yourself and the experience, provides more than we realize in that moment. It may not be apparent to your eyes, so in not seeing it in that moment, its so easy to wipe off that experience/person as a total waste of our journey.

But if you view life with in unity consciousness as sacred and connected no matter what the person/experience brings to us. You know that to evolve and honour union within and outside of us, we can open to the fullness of gratitude for all life in that expression of ourselves.

I am grateful for my life, your life, I honour myself, I honour you in gratitude......

Alethia wrote:
I am grateful for my life, your life, I honour myself, I honour you in gratitude......

And I do the same.

I am grateful for this post.

Thank you for this post, Alethia. I believe that gratefulness is a powerful tool which helps us to see things in a different light. Sometimes I feel I am "trained" to see things in a negative light and to expect lack, so I sometimes forget to be grateful, but when I remember, I remember that life is so much richer and meaningful than the people around me seem to think it is.

Riana wrote:Thank you for this post, Alethia. I believe that gratefulness is a powerful tool which helps us to see things in a different light. Sometimes I feel I am "trained" to see things in a negative light and to expect lack, so I sometimes forget to be grateful, but when I remember, I remember that life is so much richer and meaningful than the people around me seem to think it is.

Yes I spoke to someone today about mindset. The mind when influenced by those around us for long periods of our life...often reflects subsconsicously and we really do have to retrain the mind into believing in ourselves differently. Gratitude does help to shift you into a space of appreciation to bring deeper connection to all life, but until we break out of those old mindsets that we are lacking in some way...its hard to shift fully.

Gratitude is not a learnt behavoir. In my opinion it stems from the appreciation of life. All life. Not just living life, but every single part around is. Expressing gratitude, for one self, is the path to fully appreciating it. To create awareness for what is around us.
Likely, when we have fully accepted life and all her aspects, we no longer think about expressing gratitude. It just comes naturally.

tezorian wrote:Gratitude is not a learnt behavoir. In my opinion it stems from the appreciation of life. All life. Not just living life, but every single part around is. Expressing gratitude, for one self, is the path to fully appreciating it. To create awareness for what is around us.
Likely, when we have fully accepted life and all her aspects, we no longer think about expressing gratitude. It just comes naturally.

After some reading Tez...

According to research gratitude is a learned response. Children learn to become sensitive to the
feelings of others, developing empathy and view situations positively. Gratitude helps children to look outside themselves, their one-person world. You may argue that as empaths, we naturally understand gratitude,and we may understand it, but because of our own learned response from our parents, the expression of gratitude may have been lacking in ways where we were unable to view the world in a positive light. With positive encouragement, children naturally learn to be grateful and develop a positive outlook on life. So our own conditioning as children affects gratitude very much so in this case.

I hear a lot of parents demand children to say thank you in my world, but that kind of forced teaching, doesn't open children to the natural *FEELING* of appreciation. The most powerful model of gratitude is how the parent models to the child and how the child *FEELS* in that modelling.

In this instance, I wonder if a child who doesn't feel that space as a child in positive light, is then perhaps opened up to life's disappointments in ways where the impact is much harsher and as well having some entitlement issues. Quite possibly so.

Many parents can be quick to focus on the negative aspects of life, from their own conditioning, but forget that modelling the positives in life to children to open them to that natural state of appreciation.

That's a far better term for what Tezorian describes. It's a deep appreciation for life in all its aspects, treasuring, valuing. It's not quite the same thing as the learned response of gratitude but both mean nothing is taken for granted.