What is gratitude? Simply put, gratitude is the act of being thankful. As it turns out, besides sounding like a good thing to do, gratitude has many benefits. For now, I’ll start with a few.
A regular mindset of gratitude can have a positive effect on our emotional health. A practice as small as journaling daily for 5 minutes about “what we’re grateful for” can “increase our long term happiness by 10%” (Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson, 2005). How cool is that? If we want to be happier, and who doesn’t want to be happier-all we have to do is take 300 measley seconds to jot down what is good in our lives.
Get a pen, open a journal, write on a napkin for 5 minutes about what in your life is already worthwhile and you can change the feelings of satisfaction you have about your life. You don’t have to take action to make your life better to feel better about it, just got to take time to notice what’s already there. And let’s not forget about the fact that during those 5 minutes, you get to have the experience of 5 minutes’ pleasure as you marinate in your life’s goodness.
Gratitude can also impact our physical health. Gratitude has been shown to reduce symptoms of depression (Seligman et al., 2005). The research showed that as long as people continued to write in their gratitude jounal, they experienced a decrease in depressive symptoms by 35%. Patients who had high blood pressure and “counted their blessings” at least one time per week showed a “significant decrease in blood pressure” which had a positive impact on their health overall (Shipon, 1977).
Gratitude can also have an effect upon sleep. A two week gratitude study showed an increase in quality of sleep and decrease in blood pressure for its subjects (Jackowska, Brown, Ronaldson, & Steptoe, 2016). The coolest thing about what I’m reporting here is that the effects shown here in these studies are from gratitude journaling, which is a time limited, small practice. You don’t have to make your life better to feel better about it. No life overhaul needed, just 5 minutes. Isn’t your life worth 5 minutes a day?
I’m going to start tomorrow, who’s with me?
