Living a Life with Gratitude
Gratitude comes from the Latin word gratus, which means “thankful, pleasing.”
Gratitude is defined as the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
When I talk about living a life with gratitude, I am talking about taking intentional steps to make gratitude a part of your everyday life. Living with gratitude has the power to turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home. It helps makes sense of our past and brings about peace for today.
Science Behind Gratitude
Over the past couple of decades scientists have made great strides towards understanding how gratitude can affect our everyday lives.
Dr. Robert A. Emmons and Dr. Michael McCullough (2003) did a study where they asked participants to write a few sentences each week focusing on a particular subject. The first group focused on what they were grateful for during the week, the second group focus on what displeased them and the third group just wrote about the events with no emphasis on positive or negative. At the end of the study, those who focused on gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives.
McCullough, Emmons, and Tsang (2002) examined the correlates of the disposition towards gratitude. The study showed that grateful individuals experienced more positive emotions, were more satisfied with life, and experienced fewer negative emotion.
Bartlett & DeSteno (2006) looked at the relationship between pro-social behavior and gratitude. They found a positive relationship between kind, helpful behaviors and feeling grateful. Grateful individuals were more likely to exert greater effort to help others.
In 2008 scientists first used MRI to study gratitude. In the study, the researchers measured the brain activities with different emotions and found that gratitude causes synchronized activation in multiple brain region. They found that gratitude also boosts the neurotransmitter serotonin and activate the brain stem to produce dopamine. Dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter that affects many parts of your behavior and physical functions (learning, motivation, heart rate, kidney function, sleep, mood et.al)
In 2009, NIH Researchers (National Institute of Health) had found that subjects who showed more gratitude overall had higher levels of activity in the hypothalamus. The Hypothalamus controls a huge array of essential bodily functions including eating, drinking, and sleeping. It also has a huge influence on your metabolism and stress levels.
Benefits of Living with Gratitude
Research has shown that gratitude can greatly improve our overall health. The more grateful a person is, the more benefits to their overall health and life satisfaction. Let’s take a look at the benefits gratitude has on our physical, psychological, and social health.
Physically:
- Stronger immune systems
- Lower blood pressure
- Less bothered by aches and pains
- Lower blood pressure
- Reduced inflammation
- Exercise more and take better care of their health
- Improve sleep quality.
- More relaxed.
Psychological:
- Reduces toxic emotions (stress, resentment, regret, depression, anxiety)
- Higher levels of positive emotions
- Less fatigue
- Experience more joy and pleasure
- More optimistic
- Increases happiness and positive moods.
Social:
- More helpful, generous, and compassionate
- More forgiving
- More outgoing
- Fell less lonely and isolated
- Get more satisfaction with their life.
- Develop deeper relationships
- Stronger self-control
- Greater resiliency
The best thing about gratitude is that it has no negative side effects.
Strategies to Start Living with Gratitude
Living a life with gratitude is a habit that needs to be developed. Doing it just once is not going to be beneficial. You need to make it a habit in your everyday life. I’ve listed ten ways that will help you start building a life with gratitude
- Gratitude Journal: Keeping journal of all the things you are thankful for. Keeping a journal helps you keep track of and refer back to the positives in your life. You can journal every day or come back to the Gratitude Journal Weekly.
- Blessing:” Pick a time every week to sit down and write about your blessings. Reflect on what went right or what you are grateful for. As you write, be specific and think about the sensations you felt when something good happened to you.
- Gratitude letter: Write a letter to someone for whom you are thankful.
- Thank you notes: Challenge yourself to write one hand-written note every week for one month. You can make yourself happier and nurture your relationship with another person by writing a thank-you note expressing your enjoyment and appreciation of that person’s impact on your life. Once in a while, write one to yourself.
- Say “thank you:” Practice saying thank you in a real and meaningful way. Be specific. For example, “Thank you for stopping by and picking up groceries for me. It gave me a little extra time to get my work caught up.”
- Find gratitude in your challenges: Don’t just be thankful for your positives. Sometimes we need to take look at a negative situation and see how that experience has helped to shape you into the person that you are today.
- Express yourself: You can increase your feelings of gratitude by expressing that same gratitude to the people around you. Not only does expressing your gratitude for someone make their day a little brighter, but it can also increase your own levels of gratitude and happiness.
- Spend time with loved ones:
Spending times with loved ones will also give you a chance to practice your acts of gratitude on people that you care about. - Reflect on yourself: Look at yourself in the mirror and think of something you like about yourself.
- Visual Reminders: Create visual reminders to practice gratitude. (Sticky notes, notification, schedule it into your calendar.
The best way to reap the benefits of gratitude is to notice new things you’re grateful for everyday. Be grateful for the “big” things that happen in your life, but don’t forget to celebrate the small things in life as well.
Chose to Live a Life with Gratitude
The more we focus on the positives in our lives, the more we will start seeing the positives in our life. People who regularly practice gratitude by taking time to notice and reflect upon the things they’re thankful for experience more positive emotions, feel more alive, sleep better, express more compassion and kindness, and even have stronger immune systems.
Gratitude is not something that tends to come naturally. We need to train our brain to focus on the positive in our life. Consistency is the key. Living a life of Gratitude is a habit that you want to build. The more your practice the habit the better you will get at it and the more automatic that habit will become.
A life well lived is one of gratitude and thankfulness. Chose to live a life with gratitude. You’ll be grateful that you did.
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