Gratitude and Generosity (GG) for me go hand in hand. Taking a moment to notice and acknowledge the things you are grateful for each day is strongly and consistently proven to brighten your world view. Being generous, giving good things to others abundantly, whatever it is and always paying it forward is equally important and the positive vibrations are backed by scientific research too! So, what does it mean and how can this improve your Meno experience?  

Gratitude involves showing appreciation for the things in life that are meaningful or valuable to you, your journey to get to this point and for life itself. The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. Gratia can be about being thankful for a roof over your head, good health, being financially stable, a great job, food to eat and your loved ones.

It is also about being glad for the whole environment that we live in, the nature that surrounds us or that we visit. Being thankful for all the things we generally forget to be appreciative for, but that others may not have access to, like clean air to breathe, water to drink and grow with, power and the internet to stay connected. In being grateful for these things we also need to be mindful that any of these can be momentary and could be in a state of flux anytime. 

When we look through a lens of change and flux, that is when we need to practice gratitude the most, in the face of challenges and the unexpected. I am yet to meet someone who has not faced a type of adversity in their journey. It could be health related, marriage related, employment related or a family/ friendship conflict.

It is at these times we need to show up, be seen and rise to the challenge with courage and positivity, to move with the flow of life in harmony, even when there are rapids or sandbars that we need to flow around. Gratitude provides the opportunity to improve the situation and find the lesson to learn. 

Being generous, giving good things to others abundantly, whatever it is and always paying it forward is equally important. Generosity can be as simple as giving a smile to a stranger, helping someone with a task, making a meal and delivering it to new parents or elderly ones, or volunteering within your community. It can also be a gift that you have found especially for someone and giving it to them to see their delight and excitement. In its most basic form, it is the giving of money. 

If you have a generous spirt you are more likely to act with kindness in your day and life, just look at Keanu Reeves. He is someone who you could say has a generous and kind spirit. In adding generosity to your life, you open yourself to sharing with no expectation that anything will come back to you and to see others succeed makes you happy. If you create relationships based on generosity, then you are able to commit to them, in an entirely different way. 

When you have the GG, you recognise goodness in the world and that in part, the source of that goodness lies outside of you. As a result, having GG will help you to connect to something larger than yourself and to broaden your universe. It could be a connection with other people, nature, or your spirit vibrations. Either way GG is good for you and those around you. 

So, a little science and some facts from the people who have proven that GG will help you be happier and have healthier relationships, which is super important as you navigate your Meno journey. 

Psychologists Dr. Emmons and Dr. McCullough have shown that keeping a weekly gratitude journal will improve your optimism by 5% and if you do it daily you can expect a 15% increase. 

Psychologist Dr. Seligman has proven that simply writing a letter of thanks and giving it to someone, will immediately improve your sense of wellbeing, as well as theirs and this act can have positive vibrations for up to a month after on both of you. 

Another study demonstrated that in relationships, the more you can show gratitude to the other person, saying ‘thank you for doing the dishes’, ‘thank you for doing the groceries’ or ‘I love you’, the more likely it is that your feelings towards them will remain positive for longer and importantly if you are experiencing a conflict, you end up being more comfortable to express those concerns and resolve them in a peaceful way. 

In the work environment we all know how great it feels to have your manager or colleague say thanks! When we show appreciation in the workplace, or with our family or in any team environment, hearing a message of gratitude will improve motivation by up to 50%. 

You know that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you spend money on a gift for someone, well in a study published in Nature Communications in 2017, researchers from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, tested this on a group. 50% were to spend money on themselves and the other 50% to spend money on others.

Before receiving any $$$ the participants were asked to visualize spending of the money on others. The researchers took an MRI scan at this moment to measure activity in three regions of the brain associated with social behavior, generosity, happiness and decision-making and what they found is that just thinking about spending money (it doesn’t matter how much) on others, will fire up your temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and differentially modulate the connectivity between TPJ and ventral striatum. Exciting striatal neuron activity during making generous decisions is directly related to changes in happiness and ongoing generous decision making in the future. So that is the warm fuzzy, your brain’s striatal neuron activity! 

Even pain can be impacted by gratitude, with a study of people living with chronic pain conditions, being able to sleep better, by keeping a daily gratitude journal. Equally a different study found that participants who kept a gratitude journal and were generous exercised up to 40 minutes more per week. 

How do you get more GG into your life and where do you start? Here are my top 3 tips to bring more GG and ultimately more happiness into your life and the lives of those around you: 

1. Do your homework and practice GG regularly. To really benefit from GG, you need to do something daily to change your outlook. So, start writing down 3 things you are grateful for each day and start being generous in ways that have zero cost, but massive impact. Smile at a stranger, really listen to someone, pay a meaningful compliment or make a serious donation of all the stuff you don’t need anymore. On average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behavior becomes habit (66 days to be exact) and it is the same amount of time before you will notice a shift in your internal positivity profile. Doing something a few times will have little influence, but if you make this your way of life, it will be long lasting. Studies show that adopting this approach will improve your health, lower blood pressure, improve your life expectancy and reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. 
2. Write a thank-you note or send a care package. As discussed above this will make you happier and will make someone feel amazing. Doing this will help to nurture that relationship. The note doesn’t have to say thank you for ‘something’, it can be thanking them for the enjoyment they bring to your life and how much you appreciate it. Sending a care package of food to new parents is a beautiful way to be generous. They are tired and need good wholesome meals to get through this new adventure. If you don’t know any new parents, what about a meal for someone you love or care for or donating to foodbank or other similar charity. If making a meal, be present when you prepare the meal, like I discussed in the meditation journal. Send your intention of love and appreciation for the person, or people you are preparing the meal for, and they will feel the generous spirit with each mouth full, like water for chocolate. Wherever possible take the time to be present in your appreciation, if you must send it via post do it that way, but try doing a random drop in, in person, we don’t do enough drop in’s anymore (at least I don’t seem to)! Make sure you use your pen license (primary school license to write from the 80’s) and some paper to write any notes. If you can try doing this at least once a month. You will feel awesome and so will the people on the receiving end. 
3. Start a conversation about GG to work out what others are doing and how it works for them. An ice breaker question could be “Would you rather give or receive a gift? Why?”, “What’s the funniest gift you’ve ever received or given?”. If you are sharing a meal or have received a care package of food you could ask, “Who do you remember making this recipe for you? Where did you learn to make it?”, “Why is this particular food important to you?”. If you are thinking about volunteering your time or making donations you could ask “what are the causes you care about and how do you contribute in a positive way?”. I have asked this question and found out about sponsored children, that friends have put through school, university and that they visit regularly around the world. We lose our sense of curiosity as we get older, but the more questions we ask the more we can inform ourselves about ways to include GG in our lives, by modelling what others that do we look up to and who are already practicing it well.  

Next time you are feeling a bit blue, or you are about to treat yourself with a quick fix, think of GG and how your practice of it, can create a positive energy to enlighten and empower and make the world a better place. It is totally worth a try, even if you think it, is all Woo! Woo! And won’t work for you! This is a practice that everybody will benefit from and remember to do your homework, to reap the many health benefits, so that your repeated practice of giving and being grateful becomes second nature. So, giddy up! And be more GG!