GRAZIE: The New Rules of Gratitude
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Gratitude has the power to change you, your life and your work. While it can be described simply as ‘giving thanks,’ it can be a complex and sometimes daunting concept to apply in real life. So, to make applying gratitude easy, we at 7:47 created the GRAZIE framework. Each letter of this acronym (meaning ‘thank you’ in Italian) represents a different gratitude principle that can bring more positivity, fulfillment and meaningful connections into your life.
As a creative leader, it’s essential to maintain meaningful connections with others to get your work done. Following these frameworks can help you along that journey.
Giving Gratitude Pro-Socially
“To be grateful is to be grateful to someone.”
Gratitude has been positioned in recent years as a self-reflective practice, but in actuality, it is meant to be a pro-social behavior to express gratitude toward others and build more meaningful relationships. A UC Davis Health study found that two gratitude activities per day (including prosocial activities like writing a gratitude letter) reduced the risk of depression in at-risk patients by 41% over a six-month period.
How to apply it: Over the next week, complete two prosocial gratitude activities per day and reflect on any changes you experience in your mood, behaviors or thoughts. Ideas for prosocial activities include calling someone just to tell them you appreciate them, expressing gratitude for the barista who makes your coffee each morning or emailing a co-worker to say they are a valued part of the team.
Reflect
Gratitude is non-linear, meaning you often don’t identify the gratitude in past events until you realize the benefits it has brought you today. Reflecting on past experiences—even negative ones—and searching for gratitude can help you literally change your memory and perspective of the event and even heal from adverse events. Negative attitudes and feelings can create chronic stress, which upsets hormone balances in the body, depletes the brain of the chemical needed for happiness, damages the immune system and can decrease lifespan.
How to apply it: Reflect on a negative experience you had in the past. Find a way to shift negativity into positivity through gratitude. Maybe you give thanks to someone who showed you kindness during the negative event or maybe you identify a positive outcome that came from an event you usually regret.
Authentic
Gratitude should only be expressed or given when it is genuine. Practicing mindfulness and examining your true emotions can help to determine where authentic gratitude lies.
Giving or receiving gratitude releases dopamine and serotonin in the brain, improving mood. The more this action happens in the brain, the stronger this positive pathway becomes, meaning gratitude creates a snowball effect of positivity.
How to apply it: Identify a person in your life you were not grateful for in the past but now feel gratitude toward. Reflect on how your relationship with this person has transformed over time. Now, try replicating this transformation of ingratitude to gratitude with someone else. If the newfound gratitude feels authentic, express it to that person.
Zero Expectations
“The book-keeping of benefits is simple: it is all expenditure;
if anyone returns it, that is clear gain; if he does not
return it, it is not lost, I gave it for the sake of giving.”
– Seneca
Gratitude should be given without any expectation of reciprocity. Don’t expect gratitude in return and don’t practice gratitude in order to gain attention from others.
Helping others directly affects one’s health, happiness and longevity. A University of British Columbia study gave a group of older participants with high blood pressure money to spend for three consecutive weeks. Half were instructed to spend the money on others and the other half were instructed to spend it on themselves. The group that spent money on others experienced a significant decrease in blood pressure.
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How to apply it: Do a good deed anonymously for another person this week and don’t share with others that you did this good deed.
Inconvenient
“Not all gratitude given is gratitude heard.”
– Chris Schembra
Gratitude should require you to go out of your way. When considering how to express gratitude, be sure to choose a method that would be most meaningful to the person you are grateful for and not necessarily for your schedule, lifestyle or comfort level.
Research has found that when people are shown love through their preferred love language, they experience higher relationship satisfaction. The five love languages are:
- Words of affirmation
- Gifts
- Acts of service
- Quality time
- Physical touch
How to apply it: Choose a person you would like to show gratitude toward and identify what their love language is. This may require you to ask the person or do some reflection. Then, go out of your way to express gratitude for them via their love language. Put forth a good amount of effort, time and consideration to make it extra meaningful.
Empathy
To create a safe space for gratitude, find ways to make yourself approachable and open to compassion. Considering others and their experiences can help you find more gratitude and be more susceptible to receiving gratitude. Openness is associated with higher measures of well-being, happiness, positivity and more loving relationships.
How to apply it: Over the next week, engage in three empathetic conversations. To do this, actively listen, ask follow-up and open-ended questions, and keep the focus of the conversation on the other person. Take note of how you felt during and after this interaction and also how the other person reacted to your empathy.
As you welcome these principles into your life, you can do so much more than boost your own happiness and peace of mind—you can cultivate stronger bonds with the people around you, create a more positive workspace and make a positive impact on others. Let’s not forget, gratitude isn’t a fleeting emotion but a powerful catalyst that can recalibrate how we see things, breathe new life into our relationships and set a new benchmark for what we consider to be true success.
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