Last Updated on September 4, 2024 by Brenda

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Gratitude has been proven to generate a positive impact on psychological, physical, and personal wellbeing. Research shows that gratitude can:

Help people make friends. One study found that thanking a new acquaintance makes them more likely to seek a more lasting relationship.  Also people who practice gratitude often have a positive outlook that makes them attractive to others.

Improve a person’s physical health. People who exhibit gratitude report fewer aches and pains, a general feeling of health, more regular exercise, and more frequent checkups with their doctor than those who don’t.  Gratitude can help you change your mindset and what you are focusing on which can reduce stress.

Improve a person’s psychological health. Grateful people enjoy higher well-being and happiness and suffer from reduced symptoms of depression.

Enhance empathy and reduce aggression. Those who show their gratitude are less likely to seek revenge against others and more likely to behave in a prosocial manner, with sensitivity and empathy.

Improve sleep habits. Practicing gratitude regularly can help a person sleep longer and better.  In turn sleep helps your body heal improving your physical health.

Enhance self-esteem. People who are grateful have increased self-esteem, partly due to their ability to appreciate other peoples’ accomplishments instead of focusing on their own missteps.

Increase mental strength. Grateful people have an advantage in overcoming trauma and enhanced resilience, helping them to bounce back from highly stressful situations. Gratitude provides us grounding and new perspectives to overcome tough situations.

Practicing Gratitude is an effective way to deal with the grind and challenges we experience daily.  Helping your family learn to practice gratitude can bring you closer and help your children build skills to say no to risky behaviors.  You can start by modeling gratitude and talking with young children about being grateful for even small things like a pretty flower.

Many of us are out of the practice of expressing gratitude.  One way to get started is to keep a gratitude journal.  You do not need an expensive journal. You can use your computer or a spiral.  Even sticky notes would work.

There’s no wrong way to keep a gratitude journal, but here are some general ideas as you get started.  Making a physical record is important and will help you build the skill.  Don’t just do this exercise in your head.  When you review you may be amazed at with the things that made you happy.  Journaling is also a technique used by many to heal from trauma.

Write down up to five things for which you feel grateful.  The things you list can be relatively small in importance (“The tasty sandwich I had for lunch today.”) or relatively large (“My sister gave birth to a healthy baby boy.”). The goal of the exercise is to remember a good event, experience, person, or thing in your life—then enjoy the good emotions that come with it.

As you write, here are nine important tips:

1. Be as specific as possible—specificity is key to fostering gratitude. “I’m grateful that my co-workers brought me soup when I was sick on Tuesday” will be more effective than “I’m grateful for my co-workers.”

2. Go for depth over breadth. Elaborating in detail about a particular person or thing for which you’re grateful carries more benefits than a superficial list of many things.

3. Get personal. Focusing on people to whom you are grateful has more of an impact than focusing on things for which you are grateful.

4. Try subtraction, not just addition. Consider what your life would be like without certain people or things, rather than just tallying up all the good stuff. Be grateful for the negative outcomes you avoided, escaped, prevented, or turned into something positive—try not to take that good fortune for granted.

5. See good things as “gifts.” Thinking of the good things in your life as gifts guards against taking them for granted. Try to relish and savor the gifts you’ve received.

6. Savor surprises. Try to record events that were unexpected or surprising, as these tend to elicit stronger levels of gratitude.

7. Revise if you repeat. Writing about some of the same people and things is OK, but zero in on a different aspect in detail.

8. Write regularly. Whether you write every other day or once a week, commit to a regular time to journal, then honor that commitment. But…

9. Don’t overdo it. Evidence suggests writing occasionally (1-3 times per week) is more beneficial than daily journaling. That might be because we adapt to positive events and can soon become numb to them—that’s why it helps to savor surprises.

Source: https://www.mindful.org/an-introduction-to-mindful-gratitude/