For example, if someone from your AA group needs a place to stay for a week, opening up your home is a great way to be generous. Or if you see someone struggling to carry groceries to their car, the simple act of offering a helping hand can go a long way. It’s important to understand that the relationship you have with yourself will often be reflected in your relationships with others.

Start identifying the things that you are grateful about that individual. Our mission is to provide a superior quality sober living experience for men and women in early recovery, with a focus on learning and practicing mindfulness. Get you or your loved one help for addiction or mental health issues today.

How to practice gratitude

The thoughts can snowball until we’ve worked ourselves into a state of restlessness and discontent. Gratitude allows an individual to celebrate the present and be an active participant in their life. Practicing gratitude gives you power over negative thought processes. When you walk through life and see everything that is wrong, you continue to see the negatives. However, if you start to look for the positives, you see things from a different point of view, and less negativity surfaces.

Gratitude in recovery helps us connect with others, and build lasting, meaningful, sober relationships with our peers and with the world. Research confirms what those in recovery have long known – gratitude leads to a greater sense of well-being, happiness, and life satisfaction1. It is easy to understand why these traits would be important in long-term recovery. While the benefits of gratitude are clear, learning how to cultivate and practice gratitude can be tricky, especially early in recovery. As a newly recovering addict begins to take steps down a new path in life, they may find themselves emotionally and psychologically vulnerable after years of numbing their emotions with drugs and alcohol. Even with all the addiction education and recovery care management resources available, emotions can be overwhelming and difficult to process in early recovery.

Committing Your Gratitude to Writing

If you’ve come out of addiction without major health problems, or if recovery allows you to work on health problems, that might be cause for gratitude. Removing a dangerous substance from your everyday life is a huge step towards healthy living. Recovery can give people with addictions the opportunity to repair relationships broken by substance abuse, and to move forward in healthier ways. Whether it’s with loved ones, family members, friends, or even co-workers, recovery can give you the option to rebuild, and strength your relationships in life. A quick way to practice gratitude is by making a list of things you’re grateful for in recovery each day. Keep your lists for a reminder of why you’re working toward recovery- and what the future could be.

• Recovery can seem big and impossible, so it’s important to set small doable goals along the way.
• It can also be an incredibly powerful tool for growth and healing.
• Are you looking for more ideas for how to stay committed to sobriety?
• Whether you’re attending AA, any form of 12-Step, or science-based programs like SMART Recovery, gratitude is often a strong focus.
• Most pieces of addiction education literature will tell you to consider writing a gratitude list.

Taking a moment to think about something good you have now can serve as a reminder of how far you’ve come since your addiction. Remembering the way your life was when you were addicted doesn’t have to drudge up feelings of regret or sadness. Instead, it can improve your gratitude and remind you that the fight to stay sober is worth the effort. Life is full of experiences and challenges, many of which can teach you valuable lessons. If you recently completed drug rehab, you most likely learned a few (if not many) valuable life lessons that changed you for the better. Reflecting on these life lessons and asking yourself what you’ve learned in the last week, month, or year is a great way to practice gratitude and reflect on your own personal growth in recovery.

Gratitude Can Help Reduce Feelings of Entitlement and Increase Appreciation

And just as with any other habit, with regular practice, grateful thoughts can become your everyday way of thinking. Did you ever wake up in the morning and something ‘bad’ happens? You stub your toe on the way out of bed or you spill your coffee all over your clean shirt?

This will help shift your mindset away from the negative, which will impact your outlook toward life. Feeling grateful for what you have and who you are can help grow feelings of appreciation. It’s important to point out that some hardship is a natural part of life. Without challenge and obstacles, we will never learn to stretch ourselves and grow. However, if you find that you’re always having a hard time, perhaps shifting your perspective can help. You can change your outlook on life and you might notice that things will change.

Give us a call to start developing a treatment program tailored to your lifestyle around our full suite of addiction recovery services. Even when you’re committed to sobriety and living a healthy, growth-oriented lifestyle, it’s easy to overlook the importance of gratitude. However, research has demonstrated that gratitude has the power to improve happiness and aid in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety—common triggers for the cycle of addiction.

When we are grateful for something or someone, we feel an immense appreciation for them. Too often, we forget to practice gratitude because https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/the-importance-of-gratitude-in-recovery/ of our busy lives. However, in recovery, it is important to follow through with such actions and actually express thankfulness.

Most people tend to be happier and more satisfied with life when they contribute to others and help them with their own lives. This applies whether you’re volunteering to help others, doing things that make your friends and family happy, or working in a way that contributes to your community and surroundings. Volunteering actually triggers the reward system in your brain, causing you to feel happier and more satisfied. This happens because most humans are ‘wired’ to benefit from social good, including helping others. When you do good things, you just feel good, which will help you to feel better. Taking time to focus on gratitude, especially during the holidays, allows us to be present, content, and feel more positive emotion.

It’s easier to look at the struggles of recovery as a prison rather than a gift during the early stages. However, if you’re grateful for the chance of recovery, it’s far more likely that you’ll stick with it in the end. Be grateful as you work towards your goals of sobriety or mental and emotional structure. Be grateful for the second chance at life; for another chance at opportunities. Be grateful for the chance to see yourself grow into a better person for yourself and the ones you love. Gratitude, above all, promotes the positive thoughts and behaviors that support the recovery process.