Expressing gratitude for increased happiness -
Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Gratitude Exercises for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients connect to more positive emotions and enjoy the benefits of gratitude. Researchers in Positive Psychology have found that gratitude and happiness are always strongly correlated.
A possible theory is that gratitude moves people to experience more positive emotions, to thoroughly enjoy the good experiences, better their health, face adversity, and develop and maintain relationships of strength, which in turn makes you happier.
Three common ways people can express their gratitude are:. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, often known as G. Chesterton is a prolific English writer, poet, philosopher, etc.
Chesterton takes the attitude that giving thanks or showing gratitude for whatever you are doing is critical in order to be happy. In short — take nothing for granted Taylor, Does the happier you are, correlate to the longer you live?
Yoichi Chida and Andrew Steptoe attempted to answer this question. Chida and Steptoe conducted a meta-analysis on 35 longitudinal studies; the researchers found that happiness positively effects longevity. These positive effects included: a more positive psychological wellbeing and a lower mortality rate for everyone whether they were healthy or sick Carr, Healthy population studies have found that when participants exhibited a positive affect, like joy, happiness, energy and vigor, life satisfaction, optimism, and a sense of humor — there was a lower mortality rate Carr, Adding to the evidence that happiness correlates with a longer life are researchers Danner, D.
They completed a large follow-back study with nuns in the US. All of the nuns had a similar lifestyle, diet, and schedule. Danner et al. The nuns wrote about themselves and their life from childhood to present day, and their hopes and dreams for their lives.
The nuns were unaware that their essays would be analyzed for a happiness and longevity study. We can see that happiness can increase our longevity. However what are the factors that determine happiness?
Sonya Lyumbomirsky , a psychology researcher, theorized that there are three causes of happiness. While there are different causes of happiness, one way for sure to bring about more happiness is gratitude.
Leaders in Positive Psychology, researchers Dr. Robert A. Emmons and Dr. Michael E. McCullough, studied gratitude and directed participants to write a few sentences weekly on certain topics. The topics ranged from what they were grateful for to what irritants they had encountered that week.
At 10 weeks, the researchers found that the participants who wrote about gratitude were more hopeful about the future and had less medical appointments, and exercised more Giving thanks can make you happier.
Download 3 Free Gratitude Exercises PDF These detailed, science-based exercises will equip you or your clients with tools to build daily gratitude habits, express more appreciation toward others, and experience more positive emotions in everyday life.
There are many researchers looking at how to measure and predict positive emotions in order to share with the world the key factors responsible or what are the best tools and skills to practice to be happier. vanOyen Witvilet and her team of researchers studied and assessed how gratitude could possibly predict hope and happiness, respectively.
The researchers assessed gratitude writing in the intervention group. A total of 3 studies were conducted, studies 1 and 2, participants were randomized into 1 of 3 groups:.
For the first two studies, the participants were also asked to keep a record of their moods, coping behaviors, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life appraisals. For the third study, prior to enrollment, these participants had been diagnosed with a neuromuscular disease, and were randomly assigned to either the gratitude intervention or the control group.
Although the researchers were looking to see benefits in both the positive affect and somatic realm, only in the social-emotional aspect did the participants show a higher positive affect Emmons and McCullough, How exactly?
Their explanation surmises that if you take the time to notice the good things in life you will feel happier. Psychological researchers Matthias R. Mehl, Shannon E. Holleran, C. Shelby Clark, and Simine Vazire looked at the difference in happiness for people who were less social and had more superficial conversations versus people that were more social and had deeper conversations.
Their findings showed that those that had more deep conversations and socialized more frequently with others were happier Association of Psychological Science, There is a direct link between happiness and gratitude.
Expressing gratitude brings about happiness for the one giving thanks. The more someone is thankful or feels gratitude, the less there is time or room for negative thoughts.
First, she directs the reader that being grateful offers us a moment to savor the joy we are currently experiencing, which in turn lessens the dreariness of any negative going on at the time. For people that have experienced some of the most traumatizing experiences or situations, they have found positive effects from those experiences or from life itself to be thankful for.
These positive effects include adjusting, processing, and moving on from the trauma. Gratitude can also help with building empathy for others, and social bonds whether pre-existing or new.
Gratitude is the most giving state of mind that we can train our thinking to stay in. When we give or receive gratitude we are happier for it.
Gratitude involves and evolved from one of the basic animal interactions, acknowledgment. Tennen and Afflek found that when people are faced with adversity or traumas if they are able to experience gratitude, they are able to push through the adversity or trauma and be more resilient.
Feeling gratitude or receiving gratitude makes both parties happier or see things from a more positive perspective. How could it not, right? You are literally thanking someone or something for something that is positive.
Positivity rubs off, and when you feel more positive you feel happier. But why is that? However, we are able to accept the negative thoughts or situations that we have or are in. When we accept whatever our circumstances are, we waste much less energy on negative emotions such as rejecting or denying the negative.
Instead, we are able to accept everything about our circumstance — taking in both the good and the bad. Norton introduces a novel idea about how money can bring you happiness, but it does not include spending the money on yourself.
Norton and his colleague did a social experiment, in where they gave people money to spend either on themselves or others. They asked the participants to rate their happiness before and after the social experiment Norton, He talks about how there is no average or most common type of happiness or taste in food for everyone, everyone is different and the best way to make everyone happy and buy into a food is to give them their special variety of happiness Gladwell, Schwartzberg, a cinematographer, discusses the work he does with time-lapse photography and how it can be a form of meditation.
Anchor, a psychologist researcher looks at what makes people happy and how to create lasting positive change by researching the topic extensively. Recent evidence suggests that a promising approach is to complement psychological counseling with additional activities that are not too taxing for clients but yield high results.
In our own research, we have zeroed in on one such activity: the practice of gratitude. Indeed, many studies over the past decade have found that people who consciously count their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed.
The problem is that most research studies on gratitude have been conducted with well-functioning people. Is gratitude beneficial for people who struggle with mental health concerns?
And, if so, how? We set out to address these questions in a recent research study involving nearly adults, mostly college students who were seeking mental health counseling at a university. We recruited these participants just before they began their first session of counseling, and, on average, they reported clinically low levels of mental health at the time.
The majority of people seeking counseling services at this university in general struggled with issues related to depression and anxiety. We randomly assigned our study participants into three groups.
Although all three groups received counseling services, the first group was also instructed to write one letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks, whereas the second group was asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about negative experiences.
The third group did not do any writing activity. What did we find? Compared with the participants who wrote about negative experiences or only received counseling, those who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health four weeks and 12 weeks after their writing exercise ended.
This suggests that gratitude writing can be beneficial not just for healthy, well-adjusted individuals, but also for those who struggle with mental health concerns.
In fact, it seems, practicing gratitude on top of receiving psychological counseling carries greater benefits than counseling alone, even when that gratitude practice is brief.
When we dug deeper into our results, we found indications of how gratitude might actually work on our minds and bodies.
First, by analyzing the words used by participants in each of the two writing groups, we were able to understand the mechanisms behind the mental health benefits of gratitude letter writing. What if we didn't take good things for granted?
Learn how gratitude can lead to a better life—and a better world—in this new GGSC book. It was only when people used fewer negative emotion words in their letters that they were significantly more likely to report better mental health. In fact, it was the lack of negative emotion words—not the abundance of positive words—that explained the mental health gap between the gratitude writing group and the other writing group.
When you write about how grateful you are to others and how much other people have blessed your life, it might become considerably harder for you to ruminate on your negative experiences. Grateful people are healthy people.
Practicing gratitude slows the effects of neurodegeneration and leads to decreased inflammation and lower blood pressure. Researchers have shown when we practice appreciation, our bodies release the oxytocin hormone, which expands blood vessels, reduces blood pressure, and protects your heart.
Oxytocin deepens our relationships and helps us feel more connected to others. It also supports us in building a network of family and friends, which results in a longer and healthier life. Studies have also shown that grateful people eat healthy, move their bodies more, and are less likely to abuse alcohol or other drugs.
Accepting happiness makes us grateful for all that we have and, over time, makes us stronger. Praising our efforts prepares us for the difficulties we may have to manage in the future.
Practicing gratitude and compassion is always essential—this intentional behavior creates a trickle-down effect. If you are kind to yourself and grateful toward others, people start taking your lead, and before you know it, the world is a more thoughtful and kind place.
Health Care Home Healthfeed 11 Practicing Gratitude for Better Health and Well-Being. Nov 19,
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