Gratitude is something that’s been on my mind a lot recently so I decided to do a little digging around to see how my own thoughts and experiences measured up to what’s out there. I attended a short presentation on gratitude at work a few years back  (part of corporate wellness stuff) and quite a bit of it stuck with me. I hope you enjoy this summary of what I’ve found and take some time to think about how to incorporate more gratitude into your life. One of the most amazing things about this tool, if you’ve read many of my other posts you know I love puns, is that it can and will provide you with true “instant gratification.”

Before categorizing and enumerating just some the benefits it’s always good to start with a solid definition. Look it up, it’s kind of a funny word in that you can find definitions that describe it as either a feeling “what one feels when they are thankful” or an act “gratitude is giving thanks and appreciation”. So what does the other person feel, the one at the receiving end? That’s easy, happiness. Wow, with just a few words we can initiate positive feelings in ourselves and create, from thin air, happiness in someone else. What a word, what a deal!

I could almost just stop now, enough said right? Lets dig a little deeper into the benefits for both the sender and receiver of gratitude. According to the article Why Gratitude is Good by Dr. Robert Emmons, studies have shown not only psychological and social benefits but physical benefits as well. Everything ranging from an overall increase in mood to lower blood pressure and, yes, even better sleep! I didn’t just buy-in to the better sleep comment though but it didn’t take long to find this study: Gratitude influences sleep through the mechanism of pre-sleep cognitions how crazy is that? To be clear though, this benefit is tied to using a gratitude journal, where you log the things during the day that you are thankful for before going to bed with the idea that those positive thoughts/emotions have an immediate impact on sleep.

There’s more though, lots more.  In this study, Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life, where journaling was also a key element, grateful participants reported overall better well-being, better health and exercised about 40 minutes more per week.  In Is Gratitude an Alternative to Materialism? you’ll find correlation between gratitude and materialism that really isn’t that surprising but you’ve got to think about it a little bit first. And yet another on how gratitude is a good predictor of overall life satisfaction: Gratitude uniquely predicts satisfaction with life: Incremental validity above the domains and facets of the five factor model. I could list a few more dozen like these but I think you get the point. Now I’ll switch back to some things I recall from that seminar I mentioned that I can personally attest to as opposed to counting on either common sense or research.

Making gratitude part of your daily life can increase your personal resilience. What do I mean by that? Well, when you are focused on gratitude you tend to look for the positive things around you and after a while that becomes habit – a very good habit. Through this kind of lens even bad things have a bright side and the faster you can recognize what that is, the more resilient you will be. The more resilient you are, the faster you can turn failures into successes and the more experiences you have with this cycle the more you build your self-confidence. It’s a viscous cycle in the positive direction!

This one is probably obvious but your personal relationships will benefit because guess what? When you make someone happy, they tend to want return the favor. That’s not give-and-take, that’s give-and-give. That’s what builds and strengthens relationships, both personal and professional.

I don’t think anything beats exercise as a stress reliever, but gratitude is right up there. What better way to take your mind off of something that’s got you spinning out of control other than to express sincere thanks for something that someone has done/is doing for you on a regular basis. Again, the theme here is about turning your attention and your focus to something genuinely positive and putting a smile on someone else’s face all at the same time. There are lots of books, blogs, and articles out there that go into way more depth than the very few items I’ve covered here. I challenge you to focus on gratitude for a few days, make a real effort and you won’t be disappointed!