Gratitude. For a fulfilling life
Author: Dimitra Didangelou
Publishing House: Kastaniotis, 2020
(Written and published in Greek language)
Expressing gratitude is a simple and scientifically proven way to feel greater happiness, optimism, satisfaction and love in our lives.
The psychologist Dimitra Didangelou combines her professional experience in therapeutic writing with the bibliographic, empirical and experiential research on the subject of gratitude. The content is enriched with testimonies of people who give their own perspective on gratitude, but also stories that give strength and inspiration for the expression of gratitude after extremely difficult life events: a woman who has a total disability and can move only her right hand but feels immense gratitude towards life and her illness. A retiree who has lost her partner for thirty years and tries to move forward feeling fullness and pleasure in her daily life. A young woman who almost lost her life in a routine operation and through gratitude managed to give meaning to the whole experience and transform it into a gift for other people in need.
Gratitude is useful not only in good times but also in times of crisis. That’s when it can be more useful than ever. It helps us to see the difficulties – which will inevitably come at some point in life – with a different perspective, to appreciate the lessons we learned from them and the people who may have helped us during them. It helps us not to ignore pain, but to be able to move our lives forward despite this emotional pain.
At the end of the book, the reader will find exercises for expressing gratitude based on the techniques of therapeutic writing in order to integrate it into her/his daily routine and improve life.
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Gratitude is a prism of a positive attitude, a choice.
Gratitude is a way of living.
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“It is particularly timely for this book to arrive as we wrestle with global changes and uncertainties at an individual, societal and planetary level. This book goes far beyond the now commonplace technique of ‘keeping a gratitude diary’ in which the recording of three items on a daily basis has been shown to reduce depression and increase happiness. It will be a valuable book for practitioners in the helping professions and their clients but also for anyone who is seeking a different approach to dealing with difficult times.”
~ Kate Thompson, Author of Therapeutic Journal Writing: an introduction for practitioners
“Gratitude, through empirical and experiential research, is proclaimed in a privileged field of overcoming the sufferings that mark our psyche. You can become, in a way, the author of your own destiny and life. It could also be a manual for a life that deserves to be called life. It is worth reading the book, to ponder it, to feel it. Gratitude, after all, is a way to be.”
~ Foteini Tsalikoglou, Author, Professor of Psychology at Panteion University
