Yesterday we spoke about the blessings of gratitude in part one. Today in blessings of gratitude part 2 I want to continue the theme of gratitude and why it’s so important in our everyday lives.

Incredibly, there is scientific proof that when you express gratitude. People are more inclined to want to be around you. A group of researchers performed 2 different studies, with a total of 243 volunteers. They asked the participants how grateful they were in their lives, how often they expressed gratitude. They then instructed them to consciously be more aware of more situations, occasions and other things to be grateful for.

The students who reported being more grateful than before became more trusting and social, appreciative and nicer. This made them more attractive to others, thus more likable. The researchers noticed that just a 10% increase in how grateful the volunteers were generated roughly 17.5% more social capital. Social capital is a term which describes the things which make you more sociable. That also make other people want to be around you and get to know you.

The effect is subtle and is not anything that you consciously do. You simply give off a vibe of likability. Practicing daily gratitude can help you deepen existing relationships and make new friends. People tend to gravitate towards you like moths to a flame when you are grateful. People like to be liked! Indirectly your gratitude boosts their self-esteem.

Gratitude Makes You Healthier in Mind and Body

A study entitled Positive Psychology Progress was released in 2005. It showed that keeping a daily gratitude journal resulted in 30% fewer symptoms of depression. This effect continues as long as you update your journal. Another reason to update your general daily.

Take some time to start and maintain a gratitude journal (I will show you exactly how to do this later), and you boost your happiness while lowering your risk of becoming depressed.

That same study asked a group of volunteers to make a gratitude visit. This is when you physically meet someone to tell them that you are thankful for having them in your life. People respond to you when you tell them how grateful you are for something they did for you. It makes them want to do more things for you. A single visit to personally tell someone they were appreciated led to an incredible 35% drop in depression symptoms for several weeks!

Research released in 2003, in a report titled Counting Blessings Versus Burdens, showed just how routine gratitude dramatically increased physical health in several different areas. Keeping a daily gratitude journal led to …

An increase of 8% more sleep, and an impressive 25% increase in the quality of sleep

Volunteers reporting 10% less physical pain

A jump of 19% in time spent exercising

A drop of 16% in poor health symptoms

Multiple independent studies show when you are grateful more often, you have more energy and vitality. A 2007 report titled Gratitude: Effects on Perspectives and Blood Pressure revealed a link between hypertension and emotions. Doctors that participated in that study asked their patients to “count their blessings once a week” as a complementary therapy to traditional treatment methods.

That simple once a week pattern of gratefulness led to a “significant decrease in systolic blood pressure”, which led to a lowering of high blood pressure. This drop of high blood pressure symptoms was much greater in the patients who were thankful once every 7 days, than it was in patients who were not given that instruction.

Gratitude may not be able to cure cancer, but the positive emotions that come from thankfulness lead to overall health and wellness. Over 130 different research studies show that practicing gratitude can boost your immune system functioning, help you recover faster from medical procedures, make your heart healthier and decrease the likelihood that you will develop a mental disorder. All in all, this means that you have to visit the doctor less often than those people who do not express thankfulness on a regular basis.

Psychologists and experts on the subject of the human brain understand that optimism and positive emotions allow you to live longer than pessimistic, negative people. It all has to do with the stress hormones your body produces when it senses you are not happy. You know from earlier that expressing gratitude creates positive emotions. These emotions make you optimistic about yourself, the people in your life, your immediate environment and the world at large.

Being positive heps you live a longer more productive life

You have fewer cases of stress, anxiety and depression. Your brain releases “feel good” hormones rather than anxiety and stress-producing hormones. This leads to a body and mind which are healthier than if they are affected by the inflammation which is caused by continuous stress and negative emotions. Practice gratitude every day and you not only live longer, but you also enjoy and appreciate the time you have.

Any notebook or paper tablet can serve as a gratitude journal. Your journal works better if it is aesthetically pleasing. Try to find one that is a color you like and has a binding or wrapper that feels good. This will help you enjoy the process of writing down your grateful thoughts more than if you use a standard tablet or notebook.

Every night before you prepare to go to bed, think about and write down what you were grateful for that day. This nighttime practice has been proven to improve sleep quality, and also to help you fall asleep quicker. Gratitude isn’t just about those huge moments that rock your life it’s about simple things such as a bowl of fresh flowers. A good book, a new movie you viewed, and other simple, daily occurrences are all worthy of gratitude.

Try to write down 5 to 10 different things that made you grateful that day. If you like to read or watch television before you go to bed, that is okay. Just make sure that journaling your thoughts of gratitude is the very last thing you do before you go to sleep.

If you are unsure how to create your own gratitude journal, turn to the Internet.

Go to your favorite search engine and look for “gratitude journal” or “thankfulness journal”. There are all kinds of online gratitude journal templates that you can personalize for your own unique situation. Look for “online gratitude journal” to find pieces of software and applications that let you access your gratitude journal from any Internet-connected device.

Why You Should Practice Gratitude Daily

A quick check in a thesaurus shows that the following words are opposites, or antonyms, for the word gratitude:

Callousness

Agitation

Ingratitude

Thanklessness

Desecration

Condemnation

Think about the emotions behind those words. We have all had those negative emotions at some time. When we haven’t been mindful at that point. We have also all been agitated and taking it out on the nearest person. The emotions don’t reflect the blessings of gratitude.

Most of us, feel that we were in the wrong one we experience those emotions. We regret our thoughts and our actions.

Each emotion that we feel has energy behind it. When we express gratitude it feels good. It opens our heart center. Very quickly we feel calmer and more peaceful.

Also, being grateful makes us realize how much we have to be truly thankful for. My life definitely improved for the better about three years ago when I decided to show gratitude every day.

As of today 1 October 2018 I am going to write here the three most important things I want to be grateful for in a day. Your comments would be greatly appreciated and perhaps you will join me with your own gratitude journal.

When you are truly thankful something marvelous happens at a physiological and spiritual level. You are instantly more open and also more receptive. The world looks a better place, I am calmer and feel more enriched. I am more willing to trust the universe.

The blessings of Appreciation

Being appreciative makes me look for solutions in my daily problems. We still have challenges when we are grateful, but we look at them differently.

There is a direct link between a gratitude journal, becoming more aware of the things you have to be thankful for and the power of meditation.

Through daily acts of appreciation, I find that I complain less and I judge less. I am more open to be happy and see joy around me. The powerful emotions evoked by a simple thank you cannot be underestimated.

I am totally blessed in the fact that 99 times out of a hundred my first thought in the morning is “thank you, thank you, thank you”

That was not always the case. I have achieved this through practice. Interestingly enough I noticed even after the day my husband died it was still my first thought in the morning.

My Benefits of Practicing Daily Gratitude

Humans are incredibly complex beings. Literally millions of processes are happening inside your body at any given moment. They control how your body and mind work. Then there are your emotions and your spiritual being. Unlike your physical body, your spirituality and the way you feel about things are ethereal, and cannot be seen.

However, your physical, mental and spiritual aspects are all related and influenced by each other. This complexity means that a positive mindset can deliver physical rewards. Taking care of your physical body makes your mind and spirit healthier. Keeping your brain sharp allows for spiritual and physical health and well-being.

This is how the powerful emotions that come from a sense of gratefulness can positively impact your life on so many levels.

Incidentally, the benefits from a daily practice of gratitude are nearly limitless. Since all people are different, you may experience a different set of physical, mental and spiritual rewards than someone else. In many cases, however, there are common benefits of being grateful which are consistently reported. Some have even been documented scientifically, and are included in the list of impressive gratitude benefits listed below.

Expressing Thanks Makes You More Productive.

Grateful people are productive people. They get more done because their mind is clear and sharp. When you show appreciation for something, it means you are focusing on the positive things in your life, rather than your worries and troubles. We know that constant worry causes stress in both mind and body. When you are worried and stressed out, you can’t focus, since your mind is concentrating on trying to remove whatever is causing the stress in your life.

A lack of focus leads to a drop in productivity. A daily acknowledgment of the blessings in your life delivers mental peace and clarity. This leads to an improved ability to concentrate, which can make you more productive at any task or endeavor.

Gratitude Helps in the Decision Making Process

Even the smallest of decisions is an involved process. Think about something as simple as driving to the store to pick up a gallon of milk. Should you change, or go in the clothes you’re wearing? How much gas do you have in your vehicle? While you are there, do you need to buy anything else? If you leave now, will you be back in time for the start of your favorite program, or should you wait until after the show is over?

This illustrates how many thought processes go into making a simple decision. Imagine how much more complicated the decision making process is for doctors. They are tasked with choosing the right treatment or medication for a patient every time. One study showed that after expressing gratitude, doctors were able to make a healthier and more accurate diagnosis than if they did not feel thankful.

Blessings of gratitude

One set of doctors was shown a list of symptoms of an imaginary patient. On top of that, they were handed misleading information. They were told the patient had already been diagnosed by another doctor as having contracted lupus. Half of the doctors in this experiment were given a token of appreciation, which they felt grateful for.

The other half of the doctors did not receive any token of appreciation. Those doctors were much more likely to simply go with the incorrect lupus diagnosis than the doctors who were grateful. The doctors who expressed thanks for their gift spent more time and energy trying to ascertain whether the lupus diagnosis was correct or not. The grateful doctors also considered a much broader range of treatments.

It appears that being grateful strengthens your ability to make good decisions. As in the case just mentioned, it doesn’t even matter if the gratitude is for anything related to the choice you have to make. Practice daily gratitude, and you will make better decisions in all aspects of your life.

Being Grateful Leads to a Relaxed State

Positive emotions are related to feelings of peacefulness, tranquility, and calmness. Negative emotions and feelings cause a mental and spiritual state of disarray, anxiety, stress, and disruption. The next time you are feeling anxious, depressed or stressed, take a couple of deep breaths. Close your eyes and envision something that you are thankful for.

Express real gratitude for that blessing, either out loud, or silently to yourself. You will notice the stress and anxiety slipping away. Some research has shown that this practice of gratitude actually slows down the production of stress hormones in your body, which delivers a relaxed feeling of stress-relief.

Thankfulness Destroys Envy

Have you ever been envious of someone or something else? That is not a good feeling, is it? You focus in on the target of your envy, and you can see or think of nothing else. This can lead to a mental and emotional state categorized by distrust, materialism, inferiority and insecurity, and in severe cases even hatred. You secretly feel you are less than you should be and you begin to resent yourself since you do not have the thing or person you are envious of.

Practicing gratefulness wipes away any thoughts of envy. You realize that the life you lead is very worthy of your gratitude. You cannot think an envious thought when you develop a grateful mindset. Instead of being envious of something that someone else has, you are happy for them. You are also happy with your own set of blessings, and very grateful for them in your life.

Practicing Thankfulness Boosts Self-Esteem

What if you had nothing to be thankful for? What if there was nothing in your life to express gratitude over? That is a horrible reality no one should face. Certainly, everyone has many things to be grateful for. When you take the time to notice how many wonderful blessings you have in your life, you can’t help but feel more expansive.

This gives your self-esteem and self-love a boost.

This happens because when you display true gratitude, you see yourself as a person who is worthy of the things you are grateful for. You recognize the gifts in your life as rewards for being a good person. Whenever you need to improve the way you look at yourself and a reminder that you are a valuable, wonderful, good human being, take time to be thankful.

Being Thankful Keeps You from Becoming Self-Centered

Just as gratitude gives your self-esteem a positive jolt, it also keeps you from being selfish. You may think that if gratitude causes a rise in self-esteem, it could lead to an egotistic attitude. The exact opposite is the case. Gratitude leads to a realization that not everyone has as many rewards and blessings as you do.

This keeps you from looking at the world in an egocentric manner.

It is tough to be a narcissistic and self-absorbed individual when you see so many gifts in your life that others do not have. This also leads to a higher sense of appreciation and gratitude for everything positive that happens to you. Gratitude makes you focus on others, on their acts of benevolence and giving that has impacted you, rather than always thinking about yourself.

Gratitude Increases Your Level of Happiness

It’s true, you are happier after you feel a sense of gratefulness. We are often grateful for an act of kindness someone has performed on our behalf. We are thankful for a gift, a personal achievement we are proud of, or a beautiful sunset. These are all cases where our happiness is bolstered because of something we are thankful for.

You can use this emotional response to gratitude in your daily life. A few times a day, give yourself a break. Look around you. What do you have to be thankful for … your wonderful family, your friends, your home, a nice meal and that smiling neighbor who always stops to have a pleasant chat when they see you. Life’s pleasures are all around us, and when we take the time to appreciate them, our happiness grows.