With the new year approaching, this is a natural time for self-reflection.  Personally – 2025 was a tough one.  I started the year with unexpected job instability, had major abdominal surgery in the spring, and my dad got sick over the summer and passed away in August.  Looking back, I am proud that I was able to find things to be grateful for in the midst of these challenges and certain that this helped me navigate a difficult year.

In our last blog post, we explored The Straightforward Truth About Why Self-Help Is Failing High Achievers — unpacking how chronic stress, a heavy cognitive load, and nervous system overload can accumulate and drain your capacity and ability to adopt new habits. In this article, we’ll look at how an intentional practice of gratitude can support your nervous system and counterbalance stress and overwhelm.

My Personal Experience With A Simple Gratitude Practice

Having been through a hard thing or two at this point in my life, I can see a major contrast between the younger version of myself and the version of myself today in how I react to and process “hard things”.

In my twenties – I took everything personally, as though the universe was punishing me by putting me through something horrible or difficult.  This led to shame spirals that would last months (or years), ruminations about what I had done wrong to deserve what had happened – and stress, stress, and more stress.

Over time, with a lot of supportive coaching and therapy (and the benefit of maturity), I’ve come to learn a thing or two about what I can control and what I can’t.

Things I can’t control? Bad things will happen, or things won’t work out the way I wanted – and I will have big feelings about that.

What I can control?  The meaning I assign to life events and whether or not I take a supportive approach to managing emotions and moving through them.

A game changer in how I cope with difficult life events was developing the ability to look at them through a lens of gratitude. In my early thirties, during extremely difficult personal challenges, a trusted therapist told me something that stuck:

“The things that happen to us cause suffering.  But – the meaning we assign to something can make us suffer a lot more.”

For me, cultivating a practice of gratitude has meant looking for the lessons that come with challenging situations, finding compassion for myself when my actions have contributed to the outcome, and intentionally seeking out resources and support from people that I trust.  Being able to express appreciation for all of this, once I’m able to see it, is the root of my personal approach to gratitude.

Gratitude Is NOT Toxic Positivity

Gratitude works when it’s grounded in truth. It can coexist with grief, frustration, exhaustion, and complexity. Attempts to force gratitude too early can actually increase emotional suppression or shame. It isn’t intended to minimize the very real difficulty that comes with navigating illness, surgery, the death of a loved one, or any other challenging or tragic experience that we face. It is a supportive practice that is best thought of as being ‘alongside’ whatever you are experiencing.

Gratitude can be a useful nervous-system regulation practice – and this is grounded in numerous research studies and observations from the fields of neuroscience and psychology.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory helps explain this. Positive emotional states—when authentic—can broaden attention and cognitive flexibility, helping build longer-term psychological resources. This doesn’t eliminate negative emotion; it expands what else you can perceive and experience alongside it (PubMedCentral, 2024).

In simple terms: stress narrows perception. Gratitude can gently widen it – and that widening of perspective is a form of nervous-system support.

Practicing gratitude in a supportive way means that it isn’t used to dismiss or avoid grief, anger, disappointment, or any other negative emotion.  In my experience, what it does is give you a companion for these emotions that softens the sharp edges of them just a little.  It has helped me to not lose faith in humanity, to not interpret challenges as evidence of personal failing, and to cling to even the smallest sliver of light when the tunnel feels long and dark.  Gratitude can also help you find compassion for yourself and others – all of which can substantially reduce the suffering you experience when faced with difficult circumstances.

If you need more convincing – read on!  Turns out, science backs up my personal experience.

What Science Tells Us About Gratitude

Gratitude has been studied extensively, and the findings are consistent:

• A large meta-analysis published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reviewed 145 studies across 28 countries and found that gratitude interventions produced small but reliable improvements in wellbeing. The authors emphasize that gratitude is not a cure-all—but its effects are meaningful because they are repeatable and sustainable over time (PNAS, 2025).
• A second systematic review and meta-analysis examining gratitude interventions found it to be associated with improved mental health outcomes, including reduced depressive symptoms and greater emotional wellbeing. Again, the effects were modest—but consistent (PubMed, 2023).
• Research using neuroimaging showed that experiences of gratitude activate brain regions involved in value-based decision-making, moral cognition, and social connection, particularly areas of the medial prefrontal cortex. These regions help the brain assess meaning, benefit, and relational support (Frontiers, 2015).
• Other research suggests gratitude-related processes may be linked to reduced activation in stress-related brain systems, supporting the idea that gratitude can help shift the nervous system away from chronic threat vigilance (ScienceDirect, 2021).

Gratitude does not “turn off” stress. What it appears to do is help the brain register cues of safety, support, and connection, which matters when your system is operating on high alert. It may also help to re-engage the prefrontal cortex and diminish the prominence of activity in the amygdala, which we learned in our last post is linked to states of hypervigilance (aka chronic stress and higher allostatic load), emotional reactivity, and the production of stress chemicals and hormones, like cortisol.

The research supports my personal experience that a gratitude practice can ‘soften’ the impact of difficult or distressing life events and circumstances.  

Why Gratitude Is Especially Helpful For High Achievers 

High achievers are often rewarded for scanning for gaps, risks, and focusing on what needs improvement. This orientation drives success—but it also keeps the nervous system locked in evaluation mode and trained to find exceptions, not things that are going well.

Over time, this can create a bias toward urgency and deficiency:
What’s not done? What could go wrong?

Gratitude acts as a counterweight—not by lowering standards, but by helping the brain register that not everything is urgent or unresolved. For people carrying high responsibility, this can reduce internal pressure and support steadier decision-making.

In this way, gratitude can be a self-leadership skill by helping broaden thinking and attention, even when under pressure or stress.

A Realistic, Evidence-Based Gratitude Practice

Perhaps the best part of adopting a simple gratitude practice is how accessible it is to get started.  I got curious about it on the yoga mat, when, during savasana, I really enjoyed a few times that the instructor encouraged the class to think about an aspect of life that they were grateful for.  This led to checking out gratitude meditations on the Calm app, which is a great source of grounding practices and inspiration for self-reflection, and I slowly and organically built from there.

Starting a gratitude practice can be as simple as:

• Creating a note in your phone and, before bed, jotting down something that went well, a moment of kindness, anything you noticed that was positive or that boosted your mood,
• If you like putting pen to paper, a gratitude journaling practice invites you to do the same thing but in a hardcopy notebook.  For me, there is something about the tactile experience of the pen connecting with paper that makes the experience stick, so this is another easy way to get started,
• Set an alarm on your phone and, when it goes off, simply pause and notice one thing that happened since the last time the alarm went off that was supportive, positive, or that you could learn from.  You can choose the frequency of the alarm and don’t even need to write down your reflections to get benefits.

There are countless examples of moments to be grateful for that can be as simple as:

• A quiet moment to yourself to have a cup of coffee,
• An unexpected text from a friend sharing a funny instagram reel,
• A kiss and a cuddle from your child on the way to bed,
• A delicious meal that you prepared for your family, or
• A compliment you received from a stranger at the grocery store.

The goal isn’t to feel better instantly, although you might!
It’s to start to create a pattern of intentionally noticing and registering positive, supportive, or pleasant moments, interactions, and experiences—which signal safety to your nervous system and help downregulate the intensity of even the hardest days.

If You Can’t Find Anything to be Grateful For

Self-coaching and regulation tools are most effective when:

• You feel overwhelmed but generally able to function
• Your distress fluctuates with workload or life circumstances
• You can access moments of relief or clarity, even briefly

Additional support is important if you are experiencing:

• Persistent anxiety, depression, or emotional numbness
• Panic attacks or intrusive thoughts
• A sense of being stuck in shutdown or despair
• Thoughts of self-harm or hopelessness

Being unable to find anything to be grateful for can be an indicator that you may need professional mental health support.  I’ve been there (remember the therapy quote above?), and this can be a brave act of leadership and self-respect.  Pay attention to how you respond to introducing a gratitude practice and don’t ignore what your system is telling you if you just aren’t able to see anything good in the world to be grateful for.  I promise it is worth it to tell someone that is how you are feeling and to seek support – the other side of that could be that you are able to find gratitude, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Gratitude Alongside Grief

Finally, I want to show you what gratitude can look like, even when navigating something like death and illness.

When my father started to have trouble remembering things like his banking passwords and appointments, we thought we were seeing the start of something like early dementia.  When he developed a terrible cough that lasted a few weeks and we had trouble reaching him by phone, my sister and I knew something more was going on.

We took him to the hospital with no idea that he would never set foot in his home again.

The next eight weeks were a blur of tests, conversations with doctors, advocacy, tears – and ultimately, we learned that Dad had stage 4 lung cancer.

It’s hard to describe the emotions we experienced.  Concern, anxiety, frustration, anger, grief – at times, it felt unbearable.  When a wildfire broke out near our home and my husband and daughter hit the road to be with family two and a half hours away where things were safe, I looked out at the city one night from a window in the palliative care unit. The sky glowed orange in the distance and the smell of smoke permeated even the closed windows of the ward.  It felt apocalyptic – and the only words that could describe how I felt in that moment were fear and despair.

Dad was very unwell at this point, but wanted to know about everyone else’s safety.  When I told him that Steve and Anna had left the area, his response was ‘oh, thank god – I’m so glad that they are safe with family’.

In the same conversation, he thanked me for staying with him and expressed his gratitude for the nurses on the palliative care unit who came to work even though some were being evacuated from their homes.  He reflected on how fortunate we all were that we lived somewhere with this kind of healthcare, that looks out for seniors who couldn’t afford it or access it in other places in the world, and with skilled resources (like my sisters husband) to fight the fires that were encroaching on a very populated area of the province.

The way he faced his last weeks will stay with me forever.  He lay in his bed, frail, sick, and in pain – and expressed his sincere gratitude for my presence, the care he received, the safety of my family, and the fact we live in a country that cares for seniors.

His mindset helped shift mine, and, while I can’t say the fear and despair evaporated – it did lessen.  I felt my thoughts shift to being grateful that I could be there with him, that my husband took our daughter somewhere safe when he really didn’t want to leave, for my clients whose support allowed me to essentially drop everything when Dad got sick, assuring me the work would be there when I came out the other side, and for the care and support we were all receiving from the palliative care team.

This was one of the most impactful lessons my father left me with.  Gratitude isn’t about ignoring reality (he knew he was dying) – but reframing it in a way that doesn’t cause more suffering.

THE BOTTOM LINE

As you reflect on 2025, notice where your mind naturally takes you.  If you find yourself skewing to the negative, perhaps this is a perfect time to test out a new gratitude practice – one that can carry you into the new year with a mind more open to opportunity and with a renewed commitment to better support yourself – especially when things get tough.

THE GOOD NEWS

You don’t need to force gratitude—small, micro-practices are enough.

For more posts and resources grounded in the fundamentals of strategy, mindfulness, and cognitive science – join our community by subscribing here.  For a limited time, the first 100 subscribers will receive a free mini-course that teaches a powerful 10 minute micro-practice that helps you assess your capacity in this season of life and better manage your energy – another great goal as we head into the new year!

With love,
Angelina