Why Gratitude is Good for You

“A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.” – Albert Einstein

Gratitude journals and other gratitude practices often seem so simple and basic. As part of his research, Dr. Robert A. Emmons often had people keep gratitude journals for just three weeks. See CSQuest article The Healthiest Attitude is One of Gratitude for an example of a gratitude journal.

The research results were overwhelming. Dr. Emmons studied more than one thousand people, from ages eight to 80, and found that people who practice gratitude consistently report a host of benefits:

Physical

• Stronger immune systems
• Less bothered by aches and pains
• Lower blood pressure
• Exercise more and take better care of their health
• Sleep longer and feel more refreshed upon waking

Psychological

• Higher levels of positive emotions
• More alert, alive, and awake
• More joy and pleasure
• More optimism and happiness

Social

• More helpful, generous, and compassionate
• More forgiving
• More outgoing
• Feel less lonely and isolated

The social benefits are especially significant here because gratitude is a social emotion. It is seen as a relationship-strengthening emotion because it requires us to see how we’ve been supported and affirmed by other people. This cuts to the very heart of the definition of gratitude, which has two components:

First, it’s an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good thing in the world, gifts and benefits we’ve received. This doesn’t mean that life is perfect; it doesn’t ignore complaints, burdens, and hassles. But when we look at life as a whole, gratitude encourages us to identify some amount of goodness in our life.

The second part of gratitude is figuring out where that goodness comes from. We recognize the sources of this goodness as being outside of ourselves. It didn’t stem from anything we necessarily did ourselves in which we might take pride. We can appreciate positive traits in ourselves, but true gratitude involves a humble dependence on others: We acknowledge that other people—or even higher powers, if you’re of a spiritual mindset—gave us many gifts, big and small, to help us achieve the goodness in our lives.

What Good is Gratitude?

Why might gratitude have these transformative effects on people’s lives? There are several important reasons, but here are four in particular:

1. Gratitude allows us to celebrate the present. It magnifies positive emotions. Research on emotion shows us that positive emotions wear off quickly. Our emotional systems like newness. They like novelty. They like change. We adapt to positive life circumstances so that before too long, the new car, the new spouse, the new house—they don’t feel so new and exciting anymore.

   But gratitude makes us appreciate the value of something, and when we appreciate the value of something, we extract more benefits from it; we’re less likely to take it for granted.

   In effect, gratitude allows us to participate more in life. We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness. We spend so much time watching things—movies, computer screens, sports—but with gratitude we become greater participants in our lives as opposed to spectators.

2. Gratitude blocks toxic, negative emotions, such as envy, resentment, and regret — emotions that can destroy our happiness. There’s even somewhat recent evidence, including a 2008 study by psychologist Alex Wood in the Journal of Research in Personality, showing that gratitude can reduce the frequency and duration of episodes of depression.

   This makes sense: You cannot feel envious and grateful at the same time. They’re incompatible feelings. If you’re grateful, you can’t resent someone for having something that you don’t.

3. Grateful people are more stress resistant. There are a number of studies showing that in the face of serious trauma, adversity, and suffering, if people have a grateful disposition, they’ll recover more quickly. Gratitude gives people a perspective from which they can interpret negative life events and help them guard against post-traumatic stress and lasting anxiety.
4. Grateful people have a higher sense of self-worth. This is because when you’re grateful, you have the sense that someone else is looking out for you—someone else has provided for your well-being, or you notice a network of relationships, past and present, of people who are responsible for helping you get to where you are right now.

   Once you start to recognize the contributions that other people have made to your life—once you realize that other people have seen the value in you—you can transform the way you see yourself.

Print out the list of 10 Ways to Become More Grateful for your cubicle/office wall or for your refrigerator at home.

Challenges to Gratitude

Just because gratitude is good doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Practicing gratitude can be at odds with some deeply ingrained psychological tendencies.

1. One is the “self-serving bias.” That means that when good things happen to us, we usually say it’s because of something we did, but when bad things happen, we blame other people or circumstances.
2. Gratitude really goes against the self-serving bias because when we’re grateful, we give credit to other people for our success. We accomplished some of it ourselves, yes, but we widen our range of attribution to also say, “Well, my parents gave me this opportunity.” Or, “I had teachers. I had mentors. I had siblings, peers—other people assisted me along the way.” That’s very different from a self-serving bias.
3. Gratitude also goes against our need to feel in control of our environment. Sometimes with gratitude you just have to accept life as it is and be grateful for what you have.
4. Finally, gratitude contradicts the “just-world” hypothesis, which says that we get what we deserve in life. Good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people. But it doesn’t always work out that way, does it? Bad things happen to good people and vice versa.

Cultivating Gratitude

You have to put a lot of conscious effort into practicing gratitude. It’s easy to lapse into the negativity mindset. But these are some of the specific recommended steps for overcoming the challenges to gratitude.

1. First is to keep a gratitude journal. This can mean listing just five things for which you’re grateful every week. This practice works because it consciously, intentionally focuses our attention on developing more grateful thinking and on eliminating ungrateful thoughts. It helps guard against taking things for granted; instead, we see gifts in life as new and exciting. People who live a life of pervasive thankfulness really do seem to experience life differently than people who cheat themselves out of life by not feeling grateful.
2. Similarly, another gratitude exercise is to practice counting your blessings on a regular basis, maybe first thing in the morning, maybe in the evening. What are you grateful for today? You don’t have to write them down on paper.
3. You can also use concrete reminders to practice gratitude, which can be particularly effective in working with children, who aren’t abstract thinkers like adults are. For instance, a family developed this practice of putting money in “gratitude jars.” At the end of the day, they emptied their pockets and put spare change in those jars. They had a regular reminder, a routine, to get them to focus on gratitude. Then, when the jar became full, they gave the money in it to a needy person or a good cause within their community. Practices like this can not only teach children the importance of gratitude but can show that gratitude impels people to “pay it forward” —to give to others in some measure like they themselves have received.
4. Finally, it’s important to think outside of the box when it comes to gratitude. Mother Theresa talked about how grateful she was to the people she was helping, the sick and dying in the slums of Calcutta, because they enabled her to grow and deepen her spirituality. That’s a very different way of thinking about gratitude — gratitude for what we can give as opposed to what we receive. But that can be a very powerful way of cultivating a sense of gratitude.

“Expressing gratitude is transformative, just as transformative as expressing complaint. Imagine an experiment involving two people. One is asked to spend ten minutes each morning and evening expressing gratitude (there is always something to be grateful for), while the other is asked to spend the same amount of time practicing complaining (there is, after all, always something to complain about). One of the subjects is saying things like, “I hate my job. I can’t stand this apartment. Why can’t I make enough money? My spouse doesn’t get along with me. That dog next door never stops barking and I just can’t stand this neighborhood.” The other is saying things like, “I’m really grateful for the opportunity to work; there are so many people these days who can’t even find a job. And I’m sure grateful for my health. What a gorgeous day; I really like this fall breeze.” They do this experiment for a year. Guaranteed, at the end of that year the person practicing complaining will have deeply reaffirmed all of his negative “stuff” rather than having let it go, while the one practicing gratitude will be a very grateful person. . . Expressing gratitude can, indeed, change our way of seeing ourselves and the world.” – John Daido Loori

Think about what we do here in DHS, Child Support Services and the people with whom we interact. The more you are grateful, the happier you are which then outwardly shows in the way you conduct yourself and in your life.