Freud once said, “There are many ways and means of conducting psychotherapy. All that lead to recovery are good.”

Coming from rigid old Freud, that was a pretty wildly accepting statement. I’d like to apply it to gratitude.

There are many ways to practice gratitude. All that lead to meaning and happiness are good.

When it comes to gratitude, there are many “ways and means.” Let us count the ways.

1.       Gratitude for others who are in our lives right now.

2.       Gratitude for others, from the past; these people toward whom we feel gratitude may be alive or may have passed.

3.       Gratitude for a higher power. Many people pray to express gratitude. In Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott said there are only two types of prayer. “Help me. Help me. Help me.” And “Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.” Obviously, Lamott’s second type of prayer is all about gratitude.

4.       Gratitude for a concept a country or belief system.

5.       Once, during a workshop, I had a teacher say she was grateful to her 16-year-old self for having the courage and good judgment to go immerse in Spanish, even though she didn’t like Spanish much. She went, learned, and is now a successful Spanish teacher. Very cool.

When it comes to gratitude, there are also many means. Let us count them too.

1.       We can keep a gratitude journal. Journals are usually private, but sometimes not. Also, journals can be written, spoken, or video-recorded.

2.       Gratitude can be practiced once-a-week, every day, or at whatever rate you choose.

3.       We can have surface gratitude, or we can dig down deep and keep asking ourselves, “Why this gratitude for this person, place, or thing?”

4.       We can purposefully find a way to communicate our gratitude to the person or persons toward whom we feel it. There are lots of online videos showing what happens when people communicate gratitude. We like this one from SoulPancake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHv6vTKD6lg

5.       You can do a benefit reflection. This means that you take a few moments to reflect on (a) how much someone’s action helped you, (b) the time, money, or effort that a person sacrificed to help you; and (c) the fact that someone helped you on purpose.

Gratitude can have big or small benefits. Like everything, gratitude is in the eye of the beholder (meaning you will have an individualized response to practicing gratitude; it’s not about what you “should” experience; it’s about trying out gratitude and seeing how you feel). Generally, gratitude has small and positive effects on depression and anxiety. Here’s a link to a 2021 meta-analysis, if you want to read the science:

As always, I encourage you to experiment with gratitude. It might make a big difference, a small difference, or no difference at all . . . but it’s hard to know if you’ll benefit from gratitude unless you practice it—at least a little—using the ways and means that fit for you.