Significant improvements in your mental health can begin with small lifestyle changes such as being more thankful and show more gratitude. Recent research on thankfulness has shown significant positive improvements in health, mood, relationships and well-being in people who express their gratitude on a daily or weekly basis.
In 2003, Emmons and McCullough, researchers at the University of California, Davis, examined the relationship between counting blessings versus burdens on factors such as: mood, physical symptoms, reactions to social support received, and amount of time exercised, etc. They found that people who express their thanks regularly and perceive gratitude as a personality trait as opposed to a state of mind, take much better care of themselves. They are much more likely to exercise regularly, have a healthy diet and visit the doctor for regular physical exams. Grateful people also sleep longer and experience a more improved quality of sleep.
Similarly, other research has found that consistent gratitude expression helps manage stress, which is a significant factor in many physical ailments such as heart disease. Being thankful for things and people in your life has shown to reverse the effects of stress and avoid the damage to your body caused by the inability to cope with daily problems.
People who are regularly thankful also tend to be more optimistic. This positive mood state is closely related to our immune system. Research at the University of Utah found that more pessimistic people had less blood cells to protect their immunity than optimistic people. Thus, grateful people are less likely to get sick and reported more successful outcomes after medical procedures like surgery.
Nathaniel Lambert, a researcher at Florida State University, and colleagues published a study in 2010 to examine the relationship between thankfulness and relationship quality. They found that partners who were more expressive of their gratitude felt a stronger sense of responsibility to their significant other and were much more mutually supportive of each other. They also found that consistent expression of gratitude resulted in healthier relationships over time.
The researchers found that expressing gratitude verbally or by writing it down had a causal effect on how cooperative and mutually respectful the relationship is. By contrast, merely thinking about being grateful without actively expressing it, showed no changes in the health of the relationship.
Research is beginning to show a conclusive connection between acknowledging gratitude out loud or on paper and improved personal and relationship health. By expressing what you are thankful for, you are essentially expressing your desire for a strong and deep relationship which then encourages vulnerability and trust. It also involves increasing the amount of positivity that is expressed in a relationship, which has been shown numerous times to be essential for a healthy relationship.
Of course this expression of gratitude must be genuine. There is a fine line between genuine gratitude and trying to say something positive in order to minimize relationship or personal issues. Being mindful of the stressful realities improves your chances of engaging in genuine gratitude, which has shown significant positive effects in the short and long-term.
So how do you increase gratitude in your life? Here are three new things to try:
1) Create a gratitude list: Writing at least once per week has shown to have similar effects on physical, emotional and relationship health as expressing your gratitude out loud. Since the South Asian culture often shies away from direct expression of gratitude, writing might be more culturally-appropriate for some. In addition, having your statements of thanks written down can serve as a reinforcement for times when you may be feeling more down.
2) Reframe a situation by looking at it from a more positive attitude: Change your perspective on a stressful or negative situation. For example, if your wife/girlfriend snaps at you one time, you can see it as she’s being mean and rude or that she must be tired or stressed. Sometimes writing this down can help you gain a different perspective.
3) List reasons for how difficult situations can be beneficial to you: Similar to #1, having something written down can help you focus on the situation from a different angle. For example, coping with a particularly difficult relative can improve your patience, which can help improve you as a person.
What are you thankful for?
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