To regain balance in your life, one of the most powerful practices you can adopt is an attitude of gratitude. Practising gratitude simply means noticing and appreciating many of the good things that surround you in your life as opposed to all of the ‘not so good’ things. Ultimately, we all have a choice and it us up to us to decide what we tune into in our life. This not only affects our psychology but also our physiology. When we focus on the stress and negativity in our life our body releases stress chemicals. The opposite is true when we practise gratitude: our bodies release ‘feel-good’ chemicals and hormones. I know what I'd rather have swirling around in my body — how about you? Once you start tuning in to the goodness that surrounds you every day, it can have enormous wellbeing benefits, including boosting your physical and mental health, improving your relationships and your self-esteem, and many more benefits, which we will discuss in this chapter.

Masai Mara, Kenya

How did I end up here? I can't breathe. I feel like I'm suffocating from the smoke and I'm trapped inside a small home, in the Masai Mara.

While travelling through the Mara national game reserve, a very kind Masai family offered me their bed for the night in their ‘manyatta’, which is a traditional Masai family home made from sticks, clay and cow dung. I've slept in some horrendous beds throughout my travels, from rock-hard floors, to soft lumpy mattresses and everything in between, but I must say this has to be the worst bed I have ever slept in. It's alive!

As I laid my head down on the bed made of sticks, twigs, animal hide and other bush materials, I could hear the movement of insects beneath me. It sounded like termites gnawing or a colony of bugs working, and I felt the occasional bite on my legs. How could I possibly get any sleep? It felt like bugs were crawling all over my skin and the sound of gnawing intensified in my ears as the night went on. The smoke from the fire keeping us warm was suffocating me. Every time I inhaled, I burnt my nostrils; my mouth was parched; and my throat was choking closed. I managed to find a small hole in the cow-dung wall near my bed and I literally put my mouth against it to draw in the fresh, cold air from outside. I wished I had a straw so I could use it like a snorkel. I was choking, gasping for air and I couldn't sleep. However, I was still grateful that I was safe and warm because it was freezing outside.

I wanted to go outside to get some fresh air for a minute, but I noticed a stick propped up against the inside of the door. I recalled a Masai warrior saying that when the male of the household was out hunting (which he was) other males would sometimes come in and take advantage of the women. I was trapped inside with a Masai mother and her five children so I persevered into the early hours of the morning.

Exhausted, I finally started to drift off to sleep, but then, suddenly, I heard what I thought was water gushing near my head, like somebody had turned on a tap, and I smelt the intense odour of urine permeating the smoke-filled air. It was from a big brown cow nestled up beside us. You see, the Masai often sleep with their animals inside their manyatta to keep them safe and also for warmth during the colder nights. This family home had four children, one cow, three goats, a puppy dog and of course the insect colony in my bed. There was no chance I was getting any sleep tonight as the goats bleated, the cow farted and the dog played, while the insects kept gnawing at my bed. I gave up and deliriously stayed awake all night laughing to myself at the absurd circumstances.

When morning came, I could hear the chatter in the village outside as everyone went about their morning activities. I observed the Masai mother put a log on the smouldering fire. I also noticed that the whole family, all five of them, had slept, huddled together, on a small, makeshift bed on the floor. The youngest child was not moving very much as the rest of the family started shuffling in the morning light. The mother held her limp son and tried to explain, using sign language and a few broken English words, that the child was extremely sick with life-threatening malaria. This really put things in perspective for me. The whole family had slept on the floor for me, opening up their family home and providing me with warmth, safety and comfort for the night, sacrificing their own comfort. I was eternally grateful.

This experience and many others in Africa taught me the importance of kindness, gratitude and compassion. It taught me that there are so many things we take for granted in the Western world and being grateful for the smallest things is so often overlooked. The children of Africa are grateful for the simplest home-made toys, like a stick and an old bicycle rim, which they can play with for endless hours. Meanwhile, in the West our children are complaining that they are not happy with their latest digital game and want a new one, or can't occupy themselves for longer than half an hour without being ‘bored.’

I experienced many acts of kindness like this one in Africa from families and people who seemingly have nothing but will still give you everything with a smile. I learned to appreciate all things great and small, from fresh running water, having comfortable shoes and clothes to wear, choices of food to eat and endless opportunities in life.

What is gratitude?

The word ‘gratitude’ isn't always straightforward to classify. It can be described as an attitude, an emotion, a practice, a personality, a trait or a habit. The Latin word gratia means grace, gratefulness or graciousness. Many derivatives of the word are related to giving and receiving, kindness, generosity, gifts and appreciation.

Gratitude is taking the time to pause and notice all the things you have around you, even the small things you might take for granted. Little things like clean running water to drink, fresh air to breathe, a place to live, warmth, your health, family and friends. Sometimes we just need to take a moment and reflect on how blessed we are to realise every day brings us some beauty and happiness. There are so many small moments that happen in the course of a day and many times we are on autopilot and we miss them or take them for granted.

This reminds me of a moment in time with a good friend of mine, Nicola Catalano (Nic), who I used to work with at a school years ago. I was out on the back oval looking at the most amazing rainbow stretching across the sky. It was the clearest rainbow I had ever seen, with its very distinct seven colours. It was quite magical, and I really wanted to share it with somebody. I went into the staff room and invited Nic outside to show her. We both stood there for a moment appreciating the beauty of this rainbow. We had both seen many rainbows before, but this one turned out to be quite special because, little did we know, this was the last rainbow that Nic would ever see. Shortly afterwards, Nic was tragically diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour and after years of various invasive surgical interventions, she lost her sense of taste and other faculties and is now totally blind. She still has a super positive outlook on life and has shared her experiences in an inspiring book called Can't Get You Out of My Head²⁷, which captures her courage, endurance, positive outlook and sense of humour. Bless her: she expresses gratitude for everything she still has and is an inspiration by continually looking at life through a positive lens. Thanks to Nic I now always stop and take the time to experience the wonder of the natural phenomenon that is a rainbow.

Think of all the things we take for granted in our day. It's not because we mean to, but sometimes we go through life on ‘autopilot’ and miss the good moments, or we just get too busy to stop. Children are our best teachers when it comes to slowing down and enjoying the wonders of the world — it's often we, as busy adults, who rush them through life. For example, you're walking along the beach and your child stops at every collection of shells and studies them with curiosity and a sense of wonder. You walk ahead and after some time you become impatient and say, ‘Hurry up, we're going to be late!’ Your mind is already on the way to the next place instead of enjoying where you are. As an adult you have seen those shells a million times before and you hardly notice them anymore, while your curious child is gratefully enjoying every single one. Sometimes we just need to slow down and ‘smell the roses’, as they say, to enjoy the little things in life.

Take a pause for a moment right now to look around you and reflect on what you are grateful for.

Not just ‘warm and fuzzy’

Often when I mention the word ‘gratitude’ or ‘compassion’ in my corporate seminars, I notice people rolling their eyes or I get the feeling they don't think gratitude is important for a successful executive. Some people think gratitude is just ‘warm and fuzzy’, but there is ground-breaking science about the benefits of practising gratitude. In fact, a 2018 white paper from The Greater Good Science Centre, UC, Berkeley, summarises the evidence-based benefits of practising gratitude²⁸. There are far too many to list here, but I'd like to share with you just a few science-backed reasons to adopt a gratitude practice:

• It releases feel-good chemicals: when you practise gratitude, kindness and compassion, your body naturally releases uplifting chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin, which instantly make you feel good.
• It rewires your brain positively: the brain is continually changing — science calls this ‘neuroplasticity’. We can literally rewire the positive neural pathways in the brain by practising gratitude and compassion.
• It decreases stress and reactivity: when we strengthen the positive pathways and regions of the brain, we also weaken the regions associated with stress and anxiety.
• It improves sleep: studies have shown that practising gratitude before going to bed helps people lower their heart rate and fall asleep more easily as well as improving the quality of sleep²⁹.

The reticular activating system (RAS)

Have you heard of the reticular activating system (RAS)?

It's a network of regions of the brain that mediates your perceptive awareness and acts as a filter for what your brain receives. It helps you look for the things that matter most to you based on your values, needs, goals and desires and it also looks for familiarity. Let's say you are thinking of buying a brand-new car: a bright red mini, for example, because you haven't seen too many of them around and you want something different. Just by tuning in to bright red mini cars you start noticing them more and more on the road, and then you finally buy one and you see them everywhere — they aren't so unique after all! This is your RAS tuning in to red mini cars. They were always there; the only difference is that now you have signalled to your brain to notice them more. Sound familiar?

It's the same for gratitude and compassion: the more you practise, the more your RAS will notice it. You will begin to notice the cheerful person who smiles at you, or your colleague who holds the door open for you or buys you a coffee, or the nice email you get from a client, or the beautiful sunny day. The more you practise or experience gratitude, the more you reinforce your RAS to filter this information to you because it is important to you. The RAS doesn't distinguish between positive or negative thoughts: it only knows what you are giving attention to and it deems that as important, so it will notice more of that. In other words, be mindful of what you give your attention to every day. If you tune in to the negative things around you, you will notice more of them; if you tune in to gratitude and compassion you will begin to notice and appreciate all the good things that happen in your day. What would you rather give your attention to?

This was demonstrated in an interesting randomised control study where participants who were receiving psychotherapy were randomly assigned to three groups and some had to keep a journal for four weeks:

• Group A (the control group) received psychotherapy only (no journal writing).
• Group B received psychotherapy and had to express their deepest negative thoughts and feelings about stressful experiences in writing.
• Group C received psychotherapy and were asked to write letters expressing gratitude towards others (gratitude writing).

About four weeks after the study concluded, participants in group C reported significantly better mental health and wellbeing than the others and this continued for up to 12 weeks³⁰.

Writing down things you are a grateful for can be a powerful practice for shifting your awareness to see things in a positive light. It hardwires the brain and RAS to recognise and search for more happy moments in your day that make you feel good and releases the happy chemicals in your body. The great thing is, it's very simple and it's easy to incorporate in your life without too much effort. I will share a gratitude exercise at the end of this chapter.

Experiencing happiness

Unfortunately, when we are feeling stressed, tired and burnt out it's not always easy to appreciate what we have, and we tend to only tune in to our negative feelings and emotions, which creates more anxiety, depression or negativity. This brings us back to practising self-awareness, so that you catch these thoughts early and intervene with a practice such as breathing or turning towards your thoughts, which we learned about in previous chapters. By practising gratitude, you focus on the good things around you, which boosts your happiness and decreases the feelings of hopelessness and depression.

If you Google ‘Who is the happiest person in the world?’, whose name do you think pops up?

It's a French man by the name of Matthieu Ricard, a geneticist who became a Buddhist monk and is the author of many books including Altruism and Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill. What makes Ricard so happy? Regular meditation, particularly on compassion and gratitude. To quantify this, Ricard was involved in an intensive study by neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin, where 256 sensors were attached to his scalp³¹. When he meditated on attitudes of kindness, gratitude and compassion towards others, areas of his brain lit up, particularly the left prefrontal cortex, which is associated with positivity and happiness. He also shocked researchers by demonstrating abnormally high levels of gamma wave activity, something that had never been recorded before in scientific literature. Gamma activity is linked to higher consciousness, attention, peak performance, learning and memory. This does not mean you need the dedication of a monk to experience happiness — just a regular meditation and gratitude practice can give you great benefits. In Ricard's words, ‘Anyone can be the happiest man or woman in the world if you look for happiness in the right place’.

If you take the time to look around you, I'm sure you can find many things you are grateful for. Think about all the moments that you would miss in your busy day if they weren't there, and some of the little things you take for granted. How can you slow down to appreciate them — to tune in to the positive things in your life? Initially it does take a little extra effort to give gratitude and practise kindness and compassion, but once you practise it more frequently it becomes a habit that is ingrained in your life.

Sometimes people initiate a gratitude practice and enjoy it for a while but then it slowly slips away. I believe practising gratitude should be a daily healthy habit, just like brushing your teeth. Someone I work with, Tony Bongiorno, agrees with me. Tony, who runs a successful, family-owned financial services company providing financial advice to medical professionals, has been practising gratitude daily for about 30 years. He discovered meditation and gratitude practices back in 1992 as part of his recovery from cancer, and he continues to practise it to this day. Over the years he has developed his own practice based on what he has learned, which includes transcendental meditation (TM), visualisation exercises, mindfulness and daily gratitude practices. Tony explains that he does a simple daily gratitude practice for himself every day and writes down three to five things that went well in his day or that he is grateful for personally and professionally. He says that in a busy, stressful workplace it is easy to get caught up in the daily difficulties and challenges, but it is not useful to tune in to that — it is far healthier to focus your attention on the good things happening around you. Not only does Tony recognise the importance of a gratitude practice for himself, but he also shares this attitude passionately with his team in the form of wellbeing programs and training. A happy workforce is an engaged workplace, and an engaged team is a productive one, so everybody gains from being more mindful and grateful.

Getting your daily DOSE of happiness chemicals

I have already briefly mentioned that when we practise gratitude, kindness and compassion our bodies release happiness chemicals. Let's talk about these a bit more.

DOSE stands for dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins, a complex concoction of chemicals, hormones, neurotransmitters and physiological responses that occur in the body when they are stimulated.

How to boost these happiness chemicals naturally

The activities listed in figure 8.1 are fairly easy to include in your life. They can give you that daily DOSE of happiness chemicals and that ‘get-up-and-go’ feeling. Ask yourself how you can increase your energy and vitality by naturally inducing these mood-boosting chemicals, hormones and neurotransmitters.

Easy gratitude journalling

One way to practise daily gratitude effectively is by journalling. You can buy some fancy gratitude journals from newsagencies or bookstores and many people like these as they prompt you with quotes and questions to help you write. I personally prefer to keep it as uncomplicated as possible. That way I am more likely to do it.

I simply reflect on three things that went well, or that I am grateful for in my day, and I write them down in my journal/diary. I used to only say them in my mind, but I found that I would usually say the same things over and over, like being grateful for my family, my wife, my children, my health, and so on. However, when I started to write them down I aimed to write something different every day and it helped me search for more small moments in my day to be grateful for. I usually journal at the end of my day or some time before bed so I can go to sleep with a good feeling. Someone once said to me, ‘If you want to wake up happy, go to bed grateful.’ Try it — it's simple but very effective.

To extend this practice a bit further, make an effort each day to send someone in your life a message to express your gratitude. This is a win–win situation: we feel good for thinking of them and they feel good when they receive your message. So often we want to do more for our family, friends, colleagues and people around us to show we appreciate them, but sometimes life just gets too busy and we forget. Make a point of sending somebody a message to show you appreciate them and make sure you actually do it. It may be useful to create a short list of people you are grateful for in your life and then systematically go through the list and send a few messages per week. The messages could be as simple as a text message, an email, a card, a hand-written letter, a gift, a care package or anything you feel would make their day. Take a moment to think of somebody you'd like to share your gratitude with.

Random acts of kindness

You may have heard this term before. It's a way of taking kindness and compassion to a whole new level. It's where you randomly do something kind for someone in your life and sometimes even for a complete stranger. It could be as simple as leaving a nice note for a colleague, randomly buying the person behind you in the coffee queue their morning coffee or sending a small gift to an old friend. It could even be doing something for the environment, like planting a tree. It's simply doing a good deed for no reason other than to spread more kindness in the world. You can even do a random act of kindness for yourself and spoil yourself with a treat.

Figure 8.2 presents a few unique ideas — but the sky is the limit. You can get as creative as you like with this practice.

I love this concept. Occasionally I set myself a challenge to practise it by asking myself, ‘Who can I surprise today?’ or ‘Whose day can I make really special?’. I set about sending them a message, a card, a small gift or anything that will make them feel good.

What can you do to share gratitude, compassion and kindness in your world? Who can you surprise today?

Ladakh, Indian Himalaya

A simple act of kindness in a remote area in the Indian Himalaya remains with me because of the immense joy it brought someone. After many days of harsh trekking at altitudes of between 3000 and 6000 metres through some of the most unique scenery I have ever encountered, I was exhausted and needed a wash to rejuvenate my tired body. The surrounding landscape was basically a high-altitude desert with nothing but unusual formations of sand and rock and very little water or greenery, so it was a luxury to find a running mountain stream. I washed in the invigoratingly cold water and as I was drying myself off and putting some moisturising cream on my tired, cracked feet, I noticed some movement in the rocks ahead of me. At first, I thought it was some kind of animal camouflaged by the rocks, but then my eye tuned in to see it was an old lady perched up on the rocks having a rest from carrying her load. She must have been from one of the small mountain villages that I could see nearby.

I finished dressing and walked towards her to say hello. We greeted each other with the traditional Ladakhi gesture, hands clasped in prayer fashion in front of the heart, saying ‘Jullay’, which is similar to saying ‘Namaste’ in Nepal or India. ‘Jullay’ is an uplifting gesture that means many things, such as hello, goodbye, thank you, good fortune and respect, among others. Her beautiful smile cracked through her weather-worn face as she motioned me to sit next to her. Her deep wrinkles spoke a thousand words of decades of hardship in this harsh high-altitude environment. She must have been about 80 years old and I noticed she was carrying a full basket of firewood on her back. I thought to myself she must have travelled quite far as there weren't any trees within immediate eye distance. I offered her some water and sweet biscuits from my pack and we sat together exchanging smiles and eating snacks.

I then had the random thought of offering her some of my moisturising cream to relieve her dry, parched skin. I motioned to her my offering and she smiled with a nod. As I massaged the cream into the deep wrinkles and cracks of her coarse hands, her face lit up with pure joy and gratitude. I was sure this was the first time she had experienced anything like this. It was a special moment that demonstrated the power of touch (releasing oxytocin) and how simple it is to bring immense happiness to somebody through a simple act of kindness. I gave her the rest of the tube and she accepted it gratefully with a gesture of ‘Jullay’, as she strapped the load of firewood to her back and slung the strap over her forehead.

We walked together up until the nearby village, happy in each other's company without the need to communicate with any words. As she entered the rocky walls of her village, she motioned goodbye with another final ‘Jullay’ gesture, hand placed in front of her heart, as I continued on my trek. I glanced back for a moment to see her surrounded by the other ladies of the village, who were laughing, smiling and feeling her soft, smooth hands. She lapped up the attention as though she had just brought gold into the village as they touched and smelt her hands. This experience taught me that sometimes the smallest act of gratitude or kindness — even one that seems insignificant to you — can give somebody immeasurable joy and happiness. We were both richer for the experience

When I had completed my final trek through the Himalaya (after many months) I gave away all of my trekking clothes and boots to the local people in a small village. My Scarpa boots and thermal clothes were very well worn and showed obvious signs of wear and tear. However, the Sherpa that I gave my boots to had a smile from ear to ear and the others who received the worn trekking clothes were equally grateful. They accepted my gifts with smiles, hugs and blessings, which sent me on my way with a warm heart.

A gentle reminder

I understand that saying ‘thank you’ or expressing gratitude may come naturally to many of you, and that unfortunately, sometimes we just get too busy in our fast-moving life to acknowledge this. For example, you might think of somebody and plan to make contact, but life carries you away in its busy-ness again and you forget to reach out. Days, weeks and months pass, and you still don't get in touch. It does take a little bit of extra effort, but the effort is worth it for everyone involved. Gratitude, compassion and kindness are contagious. The more you practise them, the more you will recognise them around you and the better you will feel. Everybody benefits!

I end this chapter with three very simple but effective practices that can help you reduce stress, anxiety and fatigue and replace them with energy, vitality and ‘feel-good’ chemicals. I invite you to give them a try.