What are you thankful for? It’s a question that often comes up at this time of year, especially as many of us gather with family and friends around the Thanksgiving table. While celebrating gratitude during the holiday season is a heart-warming tradition that can boost your spirits, practicing gratitude regularly can benefit your physical and mental health throughout the year.

What Are the Benefits of Gratitude?

Farming and ranching can be stressful occupations that affect mental health. There are many stressors – unpredictable weather conditions that impact your livelihood, diseases that affect your livestock or crops, economic fluctuations, and financial burdens, just to name a few. At the same time, a life and career based on a farm also provides abundant opportunities to feel appreciative and grateful. Feeling gratitude regularly can have a huge positive effect on both your mind and your body. 

The benefits of the practice of gratitude include:

• Improves your mental health – When you are grateful for the positive aspects of your life, you have positive emotions, which can help reduce your stress, anxiety, and depression. 

• Improves your physical health – Studies indicated that an attitude of gratitude was associated with good physical health, including participating in more healthy activities and being less likely to abuse alcohol and drugs. Practicing gratitude was also shown to improve heart health in people with cardiovascular disease.

• Improves your sleep – Gratitude generates more positive thoughts at bedtime, which can help you fall asleep faster and sleep longer and better.

• Increases your resilience – Being thankful for all that you have, even during tough times, helps to build mental resilience. For example, gratitude was shown to be an important coping strategy for many people following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

How to Cultivate Gratitude in Your Daily Life

The practice of gratitude helps you focus on what you have, rather than what you lack. And by being thankful every day, you’ll have more positive emotions which, in turn, helps you become more resilient to life’s challenges. 

Here are a few tips for how to cultivate gratitude in your life:

1. Take a moment to count your blessings every day. The simple act of thinking about what you are thankful for each day is an easy way to practice gratitude. Make it a habit – perhaps when you first wake up each morning and before you go to bed. And you’ll likely find that the more you practice gratitude, the easier it is to have a positive attitude towards the situations you encounter in life.

2. Express your gratitude to others. A great way to cultivate gratitude is to say what you’re thankful for out loud, including to family members, friends, co-workers, and employees. As parents, you can help instill gratitude in your children and let your positive outlook set a good example, as well. 

3. Keep a gratitude journal. Either at the start or the end of each day, write down two or three things that you’re thankful for. Then, at times when you may be struggling, you can look back at your gratitude journal to see that you really do have a lot for which to be grateful.

4. Donate your time and talents. Volunteering your time to a cause that you are passionate about not only helps others who are in need, but also can help you appreciate the blessings in your life.

5. Practice mindfulness. When you are mindful, you are intentionally focusing on the present moment and not feeling regret about the past or worrying about the future. Make an effort to appreciate the good moments as they happen and try to keep that positive feeling throughout the day.

Reach Out for Help If You Are Feeling Overwhelmed

Although the practice of gratitude can be a powerful tool in helping you cope with the stress of life’s challenges, it’s important to reach out for help to a healthcare provider or mental health professional if you or a loved one is overwhelmed by stress or feelings of extreme sadness.  

I also encourage you to visit the Rural Minds website at www.ruralminds.org to access free rural mental health information and resources. This includes the Rural Mental Health Resilience Program, which features rural mental health fact sheets, tips and information about how to start a conversation about mental health with people who might be struggling, as well as a guide for planning and leading community meetings to help raise awareness about mental health challenges in rural areas. 

Rural Minds also recently partnered with the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine and NY FarmNet to develop a free 60-minute online course: “Mental Health and Suicide Prevention in Rural America.” Though the course was designed for veterinarians and agribusiness professionals, the content and resources are relevant to all. Those who are interested in taking the course can access it at: https://ecornell.cornell.edu/custom/rural-mental-health/

Additional mental health information and resources can be found at the following links on the Rural Minds website:

• Crisis resources and support.
• Organizations that provide mental health resources listed by topic.

If you or someone you know need help managing a mental health crisis, call or text 988. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a 24-hour hotline that connects you with a trained crisis counsellor who can provide free and confidential support.

by Karen Govel McDermott

Karen Govel McDermott is the content development lead at Rural Minds – the only national nonprofit organization focused on providing the 46 million people in rural America with free information and resources to confront rural mental health challenges and the stigma that surrounds mental illness. Born and raised in upstate New York, she currently lives with her husband and three rescue dogs in rural Pennsylvania. Karen is grateful to work with the dedicated team of professionals at Rural Minds, who share her passion for improving rural mental health.