The Power of Gratitude

“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.”
- Rumi

For those of you in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving!

For all of us, the holidays are here. Another year almost at a close and a time often filled with mixed emotions.

The holiday season is a strange mix of magic and pressure. We look forward to the lights, the rituals, the food, the connection.  At the same time, we brace for the stress, the expectations, and the familiar family dynamics that always seem to resurface, no matter how much we believe they do not have the power to impact us anymore. Even when we’ve grown, healed, or changed, the holidays can pull us back into old versions of ourselves.

Every year, many of us enter December with goals.  I’m not going to overextend myself this year.  I will stay committed to my routines. I’m going to take better care of my body and my mind.  I will stay calm and present.

And then we’re tested. Traffic. Crowded stores. Emotional conversations. Social events layered on top of our already full lives. Grief surfacing at unexpected moments. Family members who still treat us as if we are 7 years old. Traditions that carry both joy and heaviness.

It is no wonder our nervous systems get overwhelmed.

But there is a simple tool, readily available at all times and backed by science that can help us remain grounded, centered, and connected to who we want to be during the holidays. That tool is gratitude, and more specifically, the way gratitude impacts heart coherence.

We may think of gratitude as a mental exercise.  Something on a list we make or an idea we focus on. But gratitude is a physiological event.  When you experience genuine appreciation, even for something small, your heart rhythm shifts almost immediately into a smooth, harmonious pattern that researchers call heart coherence.

This state can be measured through our heart rate variability (HRV).  If you feel like getting geeky, you can get an app that will measure this for you.  But rather than paying for something else this time of year, instead practice just “noticing” your heart rate.

Stress produces jagged, erratic heart rhythms.  Gratitude produces wave-like, steady rhythms associated with:

• Emotional stability
• Clear thinking
• Reduced reactivity
• Increased resilience
• Expanded capacity to stay grounded
• Greater ability to follow through on commitments

The moment your heart becomes coherent, your nervous system receives a signal.
You are safe. You can soften. You can stay present.  Coherence is powerful during the holidays when our bodies often feel anything but safe and calm.

Most people think they lack discipline during the holidays.  But the real issue isn’t discipline. It’s dysregulation.

When your nervous system is overwhelmed or stressed, it goes into survival mode: reach for the comfort food, the extra drink, the third cookie, the familiar pattern, the old coping mechanism.  Not because you’re weak, but because your brain is trying to create safety.

Gratitude interrupts that cycle.

When you spend even 30–60 seconds breathing into your heart and activating appreciation, your body shifts out of survival and into stability. When you are in a more stable state, you can stay consistent with your routines.  You can pause before reacting.  Make decisions from intention rather than impulse.  You can return to yourself.  Steering away from the old, outdated version that has shown up in years past.   

You become the calm in your own storm.

We cannot control our uncle’s comments, our sibling’s mood, parental expectations, our partner’s stress or the emotional weight of old memories.  But we CAN regulate our internal environment.  We cannot control what comes at us, but we have absolute control as to how we respond.  We GET to choose.

Gratitude does not require the moment to be perfect.  In fact, gratitude is often most effective when the moment is challenging.

If you’re sitting at a holiday table and feeling overwhelmed, irritated, or emotionally triggered, you can silently place your hand over your heart and take two slow breaths while recalling one thing - just one - that you genuinely appreciate. It can be anything at all, no matter how small.  What happens inside you will shift the entire experience.  Even if nothing else in the room or situation changes.

Because when you bring your heart into coherence, you stop absorbing the emotional chaos around you.  Your clarity returns.  Your patience expands.  Your sense of self stabilizes. Old patterns lose their power.

Here is a practice you can use anywhere.  In the bathroom during a family gathering, in your car before going inside at the dinner table, or in bed before you start your day.

1. Place your hand over your heart. Feel your palm warm the center of your chest.
2. Slow your breathing to a 5–6 second inhale, 5–6 seconds exhale.
3. Imagine the breath moving in and out of your heart.
4. Recall one thing you genuinely appreciate. Something simple. Something real.

5  Feel it for 20–30 seconds. Let it expand slowly, like a warm light filling your chest.

You won’t change the situation or your family in 60 seconds. But you will change the way your body experiences the moment. And that is the difference between reacting from stress or responding from alignment.

This season, give yourself the gift of coherence.  The gift of steadiness.  The gift of remembering who you are and who you are becoming.  Gratitude won’t eliminate stress or erase complicated dynamics…but it will help you stay rooted in your own body, your own goals, your own truth.

And when you stay aligned even for just a minute at a time, you move through the holidays with more grace, more clarity, and more compassion for yourself and others.

Being true to ourselves,  remembering that who we are and what we want - matters.  That is the real magic of the season.

Much Love and Happy Thanksgiving

Lisa

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Lisa Hamil is a founding member and host for The SOS Collective, an online international women’s recovery and support group.  However, this blog and any classes or coaching offered by Lisa Hamil LLC are separate from and not affiliated in any way with The SOS Collective.