Is A Daily Gratitude Practice The Missing Key To Quickly Transforming Your Life?
Is A Daily Gratitude Practice The Missing Key To Quickly Transforming Your Life?
If you take a moment to monitor your thoughts, what are they saying? Are they veering to the negative? Are you so used to your basic needs being met that you don’t appreciate the basics? ie: food, clean water, a companion, heating and air conditioning…
Gratefulness aka Gratitude
The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
Gratitude is a feeling, but research has discovered numerous benefits when we consciously choose to practice it.
“Is gratitude an emotion?
Gratitude is an emotion, one that makes a person feel happier. Gratefulness is also a mood as well as a personality trait. Some people are just more inclined to feel grateful as a daily habit.”
“Is gratitude a feeling?
Gratitude is both a temporary feeling and a dispositional trait. In both cases, gratitude involves a process of recognizing, first, that one has obtained a positive outcome and, second, that there is an external source for that good outcome.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/gratitude
Benefits Of Gratefulness
Psychologists find that gratefulness increases happiness, boosts physical and psychological health even in people with mental health issues. Gratitude causes us to have less toxic emotions like envy, resentment, frustration and regret.
People who tend to be more grateful exhibit less negative social behaviors such as retaliation, even after receiving negative feedback. They are also less likely to seek revenge. Overall, gratitude reduces aggression and increases empathy.
Sleep
According to a study published in 2011, in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, gratitude improves sleep quality. Spending 15 minutes writing down what you’re grateful for, may improve your quantity and quality of sleep!
Self Esteem
Practicing gratitude has been studied and shown to reduce social comparisons. Grateful people are able to appreciate other people’s accomplishments rather than become jealous or resentful, which increases self-esteem.
Gratitude has been shown to actually change neural structures in your brain. This has also been proven to make us happier and feel more content. (The Mindfulness Awareness Research Center of UCLA)
Does Gratitude Change Your Brain?
It has been shown by the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center of UCLA that gratitude changes neural structures in our brains, leading us to feelings of increased happiness and contentment. When we appreciate others for doing something helpful for us, our ‘feel-good’ hormones are triggered. It also regulates improved functioning of our immune system.
Gratitude exchange has been discovered to activate the reward center of the brain. Thus altering the way we see ourselves and the world.
In the book, Upward Spiral, Dr. Alex Korb explains that gratitude causes us to pay attention to the more positive sides of life.
Looking at this via neuroscience, gratitude has been shown to be a great catalyst for serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. These important chemicals manage our emotions, anxiety, stress responses, and decisions.
Here is a list with the best books on gratitude here.
“Be thankful for what you have, you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never ever have enough.”
Oprah Winfrey