Though they’re often used interchangeably, Kristi differentiates between “gratitude” and “gratefulness.” Gratitude, she says, is more transactional and reactive—a response to a specific incident or circumstance: “I feel grateful when X happens.”

“We experience gratitude when we get or experience something we want,” she explains. “It’s much more difficult to experience gratitude when life delivers us less—or more—than we bargained for. Having more gratitude can be like another thing that we put on our to-do list, so we end up trying to orchestrate experiences in order to feel more gratitude, and we’re often disappointed if we don’t have those experiences.”

Kristi thinks of gratefulness, on the other hand, as an overall orientation to life. “When we wake up in the morning and experience a sense of gratefulness just for the fact of being alive, with our heart and senses open to the gifts and opportunities of another day, it’s a more radical approach to gratitude that’s not contingent on something happening to us, but rather a way that we arrive to life.”

Thich Nhat Hanh famously said, “When we have a toothache, we know that not having a toothache is happiness. But later, when we don’t have a toothache, we don’t treasure our non-toothache.” Or to put it the other way around, in the words of Joni Mitchell, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

“What people often experience when they’ve lost something is gratefulness when it returns,” Kristi says. “When you lose your electricity for two days, you’re so grateful when it comes back and you can flip the light switch and get light. Or you almost have a terrible accident but you’re saved by grace, and you sit there and say, ‘I’m so grateful to be alive.’”

But, in a surprisingly short time, that feeling can go away and we default to our baseline expectations, assumptions, and even entitlement. A daily practice of gratitude, Kristi says, is the key to appreciating all the things we tend to take for granted. “The core practice of gratefulness is to truly notice, to be present to the gifts of our lives from the moment we wake up in the morning until the moment we go to bed at night,” she says.

Kristi suggests this practice as a reminder of all that we have at every moment: “When you wake up in the morning, before you even get out of bed, pause to think of five things you’re grateful for. It could be: My lungs are breathing. The air temperature is comfortable. I had an interesting dream. My eyes can open. I get to put my feet on the floor and walk out of the room. There are people I love. I’m still here. You’re calling forth those things that you don’t have to do anything to earn, and that remind you that this day is a gift.” In this way, she says, we remind ourselves that gratefulness is an internal approach to life that we can cultivate and reference at any time; we’re not...CONTINUE READING