Why Gratitude Is Good for You?

A Gratitude party is the ideal time to remind myself & share why practicing gratitude is good for your body, mind, and relationships. Today, we had an intimate gathering @Wylies Baths in Coogee to share gratitude as we come to the close of the year.
 
Many of the world's leading scientific experts on gratitude have studied its effects on physical health, on psychological well-being, and on our relationships. In a study led by Robert Emmons, over a thousand people from ages eight to 80 who kept a daily gratitude journal, showed that those who practice gratitude consistently reported many benefits incl:
 
Physical
·       Stronger immune systems
·       Experiencing less aches and pains
·       Lower blood pressure
·       Exercise more and take better care of their health
·       Sleep longer

Psychological
·       Higher levels of positive emotions
·       More alert, alive, and awake
·       More joy and pleasure
·       More optimism and happiness

Social
·       More helpful, generous, and compassionate
·       More forgiving
·       More outgoing
·       Feel less lonely and isolated.
 
 
Why is gratitude good?
 
1. Gratitude allows us to celebrate the present. It magnifies positive emotions and allows you to participate more in life. You notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, you celebrate goodness.
 
2. Gratitude blocks toxic, negative emotions, such as envy, resentment, regret— emotions that can destroy your happiness. There’s even recent evidence showing that gratitude can reduce the frequency and duration of episodes of depression. This makes sense: You cannot feel envious and grateful at the same time. They’re incompatible feelings.

3. Grateful people are more stress resistant. There’s a number of studies showing that in the face of serious trauma, adversity, and suffering, if people have a grateful disposition, they’ll recover more quickly as they can interpret negative life events with less anxiety.
 
4. Grateful people have a higher sense of self-worth. I think that’s because when you’re grateful, you have the sense that someone else is looking out for you—someone else has provided for your well-being, or you notice a network of relationships, past and present, of people who are responsible for helping you get to where you are right now.
 
 
How to Practice and Cultivate Gratitude:
 
Here are simple and powerful ways of cultivating a sense of gratitude.
 
1. Keep a Gratitude Journal. Establish a daily practice in which you remind yourself of the gifts, grace, benefits, and good things in life that you enjoy. Setting aside time on a daily basis to recall moments of gratitude associated with ordinary events, your personal attributes, or valued people in your life so you have a sustainable life theme of gratefulness.


2. Remember the Bad. It is helpful to remember the hard times that you once experienced and be grateful in your current state.Acknowledging the contrast is fertile ground for gratefulness.


3. Come to Your Senses. Through our senses—the ability to touch, see, smell, taste, and hear—we gain an appreciation of what it means to be human and of what an incredible miracle it is to be alive. Seen through the lens of gratitude, the human body is not only a miraculous construction, but also a gift.


4. Go Through the Motions.  Grateful motions include smiling, saying thank you, and writing letters of gratitude. If you go through motions, the emotion of gratitude is likely to be triggered.


5. Make a commitment to Practice Gratitude. Research shows that committing to a daily practice increases the likelihood that you will do it. Therefore, write a gratitude vow, which could be as simple as “I vow to count be grateful each day,” and post it somewhere where as a reminder.
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6. Choose your Language. Grateful people have a particular language with words such as gifts,  fortunate and abundance. In gratitude, you should not focus on how inherently good you are, but rather on the good things that others have done on your behalf.


7. Think Outside the Box. Flex your gratitude muscles, creatively look for new situations and circumstances in which to feel grateful.


Based on article by world expert on gratitude, psychologist, Robert Emmons