Gratitude gets a lot of attention as a way to improve our mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. Indeed, it has many benefits documented by researchers at UC Berkeley who’ve studied the science of gratitude. These include reducing burnout, depression, and signs of inflammation, while increasing life satisfaction, sleep quality, and resilience.

Yet sometimes this seems too simple or too good to be true. It can be easy to doubt the power of gratitude, or it can be misunderstood and used as a way of avoiding or pushing away difficulties that need to be addressed. But maybe there is another approach, one that uses gratitude to balance the energy of a painful situation and build the inner resources to move through it with greater ease.

When feelings of struggle or frustration come up, try noticing something you’re grateful for in your immediate surroundings. Any little thing to be thankful for in the moment will work. Bring the thought of it into the body, as if planting it in the heart center like a seed, then allow the sensation to grow. This grounds us in the present and brings the powerful energy of the heart into the picture, opening us to higher states of appreciation and love and giving us the capacity to meet challenging situations as they arise.

In many healing traditions, the heart is the place of balance and transformation. When the heart is open,we can see “the uniqueness and inner beauty and light in each individual [or circumstance] as well as the negative or underdeveloped aspects” (Barbara Brennan, Hands of Light, p. 76). By acknowledging gratitude side by side with difficulty in this way, we can move authentically toward a greater sense of wholeness within ourselves and harmony with the world around us.