The Power of Gratitude

Throughout the corona virus lock down, all schools in New Zealand up to college continued learning; but online. Nothing was going to interrupt our learning time! Especially my health class with the one and only tutor, Whaea Kata. She and our class (9KME) did multiple activities individually and together. We talked and learnt a  lot of gratitude: what is it? How do we grow and use it? And much more. Two of those activities were to create a gratitude box and also create the blog post you’re currently reading. I’ll be explaining what gratitude means to me and how much power that’s within it!

I thought gratitude was just being thankful for something in appreciation, it is, but there's so much more to it. Gratitude is a small thing but makes a huge impact on a person. It can do so many things to help improve your well beings and release negative attention, believe it or not. It helps control our moods and feelings towards things. You develop capabilities to become a person people would want to be around. It activates relaxation in sleeps and calm thoughts. It also allows you to be more self-disciplined with your actions and beliefs. To grow our gratitude furthermore, we use the 3 E's 

- Exercise, Emote and Extend. 

This is my personal routine of the 3 E's of gratitude:

Exercise: Whenever I decide to go to bed, I’ll grab my paper, pen, and gratitude box and start my 5 minutes of gratitude time before I drift into sleep. To ensure I remember to do this, I’ll leave a paper on my pillow in the morning saying ‘GRATITUDE’ to remind me when I come back in the evening.

Emote: I’ll make sure I’m in a peaceful and comfortable position before I start. I’ll also play some relaxing music to calm my thoughts then I’ll focus and imagine what I’m writing. 

Extend: Anything I’m grateful for I’ll physically take action to benefit someone or something, even if it’s small.

Practising a gratitude exercise the correct way enables us to access neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity means: having the ability of the brain to form and recognise synaptic connection, especially in response to learning or experience or following injury. It reveals that we can physically relocate connections between our brain cells.

The image below is my gratitude box, I call it Toks because it gives me the vibes and slang of a Tongan. I decorated it using a durag and an NBL headband to make it look as cool as possible. I use this box to put pieces of paper with written things I am grateful for each day.

After learning more about gratitude and the great deeds it has, I now think of it as a significant gift. We don't notice how much it can help us, but it removes barriers & negative thoughts & actions. It allows us to appreciate all the good in our lives in a way where usually we may have hidden it previously.