Finding Deep Gratitude in Ordinary Time

A CENTRAL TENET OF RESEARCH in positive psychology is that supportive social relationships are essential to human thriving. Gratitude is perfectly suited to this end. Gratitude is the feeling people experience when they receive a gift or benefit from another person. It can also be an attitude of appreciating life as a gift. People with a grateful disposition tend to experience it more frequently, more intensely, toward more people, and for more things in their life at any given moment (McCul-lough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002). We begin this chapter with a brief review of basic research on gratitude, focusing first on adult populations and then on youth populations. We then turn to applied research pertaining to clinical purposes for adults and academic purposes for youth. Finally, we discuss how gratitude is related to the " good life " for adults and youth and close with suggestions for future research directions. It

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2013

This study broadens the construct of gratitude by exploring the lived phenomenal experience in a targeted sample of 51 participants with diverse demographic profiles. Participant descriptions of gratitude experience revealed both thematic patterns in somatic experience and a range of appraisals that included joy, love, awakening, release, awe, and feeling blessed. Cognitive appraisals showed significant correlation between meaning and intensity of gratitude affect, and their influence on relationship boundaries between "self" and "other." Conclusions point to (a) the need for an expanded definition of the transactional nature of gratitude that accounts for the affective range of emotional experience, (b) the intentionality of gratitude focused on a transpersonal "other," (c) the frequency and characteristics of the occurrence of an overwhelming emotional experience of gratitude associated with awe, and (d) the potential impact of gratitude on relational boundaries between self and other.

Discover Gratitude Gatherings for Gay Tweens, 2028

How could your gratitude transmute your generosity?

2007

Because the Baccalaureate is an occasion for reminiscence, I thought I had a great idea for my remarks today. My mother, Naomi Gaberman Vogel, was a proud English major and graduate of Connecticut College, Class of 1949. She even served as Chair for her 50th Reunion class before the ravages of Parkinson's set in. Mom died on December 10, 2003, during the fall semester of our current graduates' freshmen year. What wisdom, I wondered, had her Baccalaureate speaker passed on to her class over a half-century ago? Would these words still ring relevant today, or maybe sound hopelessly outdated?

Springer eBooks, 2016

Journal of Psychology and Theology, 2016

Gratitude is seen as a central component of Christian theology, and the extant literature suggests that there is an important relation between gratitude and physical health and well-being. In the current review, we summarize 42 studies published since 2009 that inform this relationship. Based on the theoretical framework by Hill, Allemand, and Roberts (2013), we organize our review in three sections that focus on how gratitude influences physical health through (a) mental health, (b) health behaviors, and (c) interpersonal variables. We discuss and integrate the findings from these studies into a theoretical model of gratitude and physical health. In addition to the three mechanisms in the Hill et al. model, we integrate variables from a previously conducted literature review of gratitude and well-being (Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010), and we add personal factors, positive or adverse events, and explicit interventions as antecedents to gratitude in our model. We conclude by discussing future directions for gratitude and health research and its role within Christian psychology. Author Note: We want to express our gratitude to the John Templeton Foundation Grant #15627 for contributing the funding toward the current project that made it possible. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

2019

Most of us have an ordinary understanding of gratitude. We know what it means when someone says that she is grateful for her family, for instance. But when we step back and think about all the different ways we use 'gratitude', it is doubtful that we have a clear understanding of what gratitude is. In our common usage, 'gratitude' can have a wide array of meanings. Sometimes we use it to mean relief, other times it could mean something such as indebtedness, thankfulness, or gladness. It seems strange that the same word could cover so much ground and yet we still usually understand what is being communicated in each of these instances. Sometimes we understand gratitude to mean happiness or gladness, such as when we say, "I am so grateful that the rain held off until after the wedding." But this cannot be what gratitude means because then gratitude would be far too demanding-we would have to be grateful about everything that made us happy or benefited us in any way. Other times we understand gratitude as thankfulness such as when we say, "I am grateful for this time with my family" or "I am so grateful that you are willing to fill in for me. I was desperate!" In the same way, those sentences could also mean that you are appreciative-"I appreciate this time with my family" or "I really appreciate that you are willing to fill in for me." But sometimes when we say, "I am so grateful that you are willing to fill in for me," what we really mean is "I owe you one." So instead of, or perhaps in addition to, meaning that you are thankful or appreciative, you may mean that you are indebted to that person. For one final example, sometimes we might say "I am so grateful I avoided hitting that deer!" but what we really mean is I am relieved I did not hit that deer. These examples are meant to highlight many of the different ways we use 'gratitude' and understand what gratitude is. Some of these interpretations may come closer to capturing our

Human Arenas, 2018

The social sciences and the humanities-especially sociology and psychology-have adopted a "negativistic" approach since their inception, i.e., a modus operandi that tends to bring out only negative or pathological phenomena without ever highlighting positive and healthy ones. Moreover, they were characteristically oriented towards societal contrasts often ignoring the meaningful interactions between all the elements that constitute and give life to socio-cultural phenomena (personality, society, and culture). Researchers usually refer to conditions that affect the individual, but further analysis shows that in everyday life these conditions are in fact closely related to social and cultural aspects. The latter feature has often been neglected in studies on positive aspects of daily life such as gratitude, altruism, solidarity, cooperation, etc., since these are not considered a problematic (negative) aspect of society but rather a regular aspect of human and social events. From here, starting from Archer's morphogenetic cycle and reaching out to Luccarelli's The Asymmetry in Gratitude, we will examine through the perspective of the relational theory of society gratitude as a symbolic-cultural reality and therefore a key to read daily life.

27,000 SUNRISES: EVERYDAY CONTRIBUTIONS OF GRATEFUL AND GIVING AGE 70+ ADULTS, 2020

Although the increasingly older population has been described as a burden (Doron, 2013; Rozanova, 2010), older adults who are willing to take up the hard work of elderhood have important gifts to contribute (Conley, 2018; Jenkinson, 2018b; Pevny, 2014; Schachter-Shalomi & Miller, 2014). Older adults’ contributions have been studied predominantly as tangible services, missing important, less tangible services that were found to contribute to the sustainable nature of communities. This critical ethnographic study reveals the meanings age 70+ older adults make with others in their everyday lives. Of the main participants, seven were male and two female; one was indigenous (n=9). The other people that older adults interacted with and who were included in this study (n=16) were family, friends, workshop participants, and work colleagues. The researcher conducted “go-alongs” in order to observe and document everyday life. Main participants completed life maps, LifeForward Plans and a questionnaire, including measures of wisdom, generativity, and transcendence. Two meanings—Create and Share Other Realities and Value the Connection between People and Place— and three meaning-making processes—Turn Grief to Gratitude to Giving, Continue to Grow, and Shape Future through Ordinary Acts of Kindness— were examined for their contributions to more sustainable and compassionate communities. One example of the meaning Create and Share Other Realities is exemplified in the supplementary video to this dissertation Chris opening up worlds that didn’t exist (Southam, 2019). A new model was created where grief and gratitude drive generativity, rather than cultural demand (McAdams, Hart, & Maruna, 1998). A fifth dimension of self-actualization was added to the Foray (4A) model of lifelong learning (Corley, 2011) resulting in a new model Foray (4A+) – Beyond Self. Future research on the developmental tasks of older adults and on communication approaches that lead to sustainability are needed. Renewed calls for elderhood could strengthen the social, environmental, and economic well-being of our communities.

Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 2020