The secret to happiness lies in being grateful.
You have probably seen it somewhere “practicing gratitude has plenty of benefits,” “the secret to happiness: gratitude,” “gratitude journal,” and so on. I had seen it, too but brushed it off as something that would not interest me.
However, one day there was a shift in my brain, and I decided to start being intently grateful.
These days I start my day, every day, writing in my gratitude journal. Every morning I write five things I am grateful for. It became a habit, a positive habit.
In any transformational journey, being grateful is an essential component.
Grateful people are happy people. This was one of the top findings of the Harvard Adult Development Study, the longest-running study on happiness and health globally, spanning 100 years and two generations of Americans.
Grateful people live longer and are healthier overall. This means that learning how to practice gratitude is one of the best things you can do for yourself, says the study’s current director, psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, MD.
Being grateful focuses your attention on what you have rather than what you don’t and reminds you about all that is good in your life. Gratitude is one of the best tools for strengthening relationships, and our relationships with others are the most potent factor in determining happiness.
What is Gratitude?
Before you learn how to practice gratitude, be sure you understand the concept. So, what does gratitude mean, exactly?
Gratitude is a positive emotion that involves being thankful and appreciative and is associated with several mental and physical health benefits. When you experience gratitude, you feel grateful for something or someone in your life and respond with kindness, warmth, and other forms of generosity.
Gratitude refers to noticing and expressing appreciation for all the good in your life. Instead of focusing on the negative and the things you don’t like, practicing gratitude requires you to focus on the positive and the things you appreciate.
Impact of Gratitude
Science has proven over and over again that gratitude provides powerful physical and mental health benefits. Being grateful can help prevent disease, and can even help you live longer.
Some of gratitude’s most significant benefits include:
- Lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, and other lifestyle diseases
- Sharper memory and less mental decline with aging
- Higher-quality sleep and less insomnia
- Reduced perception of chronic pain
- Less inflammation in the body
- Better mood and less incidence of depression and anxiety
- Higher self-confidence and fewer feelings of anger, jealousy, and envy
- Enhanced ability to forgive yourself and others
- Better ability to prioritize and manage time
- Better immunity
- Decreased stress
- Lower blood pressure
- Less anxiety and depression
- Stronger relationships
- Higher levels of optimism
Research also suggests that people who are more grateful are more likely to engage in other health-promoting behaviors, including exercising, following their doctor’s recommendations, and sticking to a healthier lifestyle.
Gratitude can have a transformative effect on people’s lives for several reasons. Because it helps people focus on the present, it plays a role in magnifying positive emotions. Therefore it can help improve people’s self-worth. When you acknowledge that people in the world care about you and are looking out for your interests, it can help you recognize your value.
Gratitude blocks toxic emotions, such as envy, resentment, regret, and depression, which can destroy our happiness.
3 Ways Gratitude Benefits Our Brain
- It can help relieve stress and pain. The regions associated with gratitude are part of the neural networks that light up when we socialize and experience pleasure. These regions are also heavily connected to the parts of the brain that control basic emotion regulation, such as heart rate and arousal levels. They are associated with stress relief and, thus, reduce pain.
- It can improve our health over time. Data suggest that because gratitude relies on the brain networks associated with social bonding and stress relief, this may partly explain how grateful feelings lead to health benefits over time.
- It can help those with depression. Gratitude may induce structural changes in the same parts of the brain that we found active in our experiment. In complement to our own, such a result tells a story of how the mental practice of gratitude may even be able to change and rewire the brain.
How to practice Gratitude
Ready to practice gratitude in your everyday life? Being grateful is a learned skill—and one you can get better at with practice, even if it doesn’t come naturally to you initially. Try the simple, expert-approved tips below.
Developing a sense of gratitude isn’t complex or challenging. It doesn’t require any special tools or training. And the more you practice it, the better you will become and put yourself into a grateful state of mind.
● Say what you’re grateful for out loud
Vocalizing what you’re grateful for can be more impactful than simply thinking about it. Hearing yourself say it aloud helps seal it in your memory, and articulating it enables you to identify what aspect of the experience you are grateful for.
● Write down what you’re grateful for
This is the way I practice gratitude. Putting your thoughts on paper, whether in a journal or a thank you note, is a powerful way to connect your mind and body.
- Keep a gratitude journal: Spend a few minutes each day writing about something you are grateful for. This doesn’t need to be a long or complex process. Simply listing two or three items daily and focusing on experiencing gratitude for them can help.
Another way to increase gratitude is to compare current situations to negative experiences in the past. Doing this allows you to see how your strengths helped carry you through those events and help you focus on what you can be grateful for in the here and now.
Focus on your senses: Emmons suggests focusing on what you see, hear, taste, touch, and feel. This can help you better appreciate the world around you and what it means to be alive.
● Challenge yourself to be grateful in difficult circumstances
Life isn’t about what happens to you but how you handle it, and grateful people are more resilient when handling tough times. No matter how difficult, there is no situation in which you can’t find something to be grateful for.
● Get inspiration from others’ gratitude
Being grateful is a skill; you can learn how to do it by seeing how others practice gratitude. Be aware of how friends, family members, colleagues, and acquaintances show gratitude throughout the day.
- Create gratitude rituals
Pausing for a moment to appreciate something and giving thanks for it can help you feel a greater sense of gratitude. Meditation, prayer, or mantra are rituals that can inspire a greater sense of gratitude.
- Give thanks
Show your appreciation. Gratitude is about recognizing and appreciating those people, things, moments, skills, or gifts that bring joy, peace, or comfort into our lives. You might thank someone for showing you are thankful for them or spend a moment simply mentally appreciating what you have.
The Science of Gratitude
Gratitude offers us a way of embracing all that makes our lives what they are. More than just a happy feeling for the parts of our lives going our way, gratitude encompasses the willingness to expand our attention to perceive more of the goodness we constantly receive.
Again, gratitude contributes substantially to individual well-being and physical health. Appreciation could be considered the “social glue” key to building and nurturing strong relationships.
Reasons to Practice Gratitude
Here are 3 reasons you should practice gratitude:
- If you aren’t grateful, you aren’t enjoying your life. Life is passing you by, and you are missing it! Don’t wait for everything to be perfect before you decide to enjoy your life.
- Gratitude makes a difference in your attitude. Gratitude causes you to be less stressed, more joyful, and more connected. It makes you feel connected to the present so that you give it your best, your all, and your affection. And gratitude pushes out bitterness, resentment, and jealousy. In
- Gratitude leads to contentment. Eventually, you will be content with what you have with your current status, money, possessions, and relationships.
Final Thoughts
Practicing gratitude has incredible effects, from improving our mental health to boosting our relationships with others.
Gratitude is seeing what’s there instead of what isn’t.
It’s appreciating it all, the small things in your life, as well as the big things.
Gratitude is being thankful.
It’s thankfulness for what you have and showing that being greatful towards others.
There are so many ways you can begin practicing gratitude. You can start practicing gratitude to make it a part of your lifestyle and begin to let it lead you to contentment and a giving heart.