Why gratitude works

Once there, a catering employee was cleaning the machine. A quick glance at the clock showed that I had enough time to just wait out the moment and then take my coffee with me. I struck up a conversation with the woman and ended up thanking her for doing this work for all of us, every day, so that we could always get fresh coffee at the touch of a button. And what wonderful moments arise when we appreciate others for what they mean to us in life or what they do — even if it seems quite natural to us.

And I can tell you that this is not an observation only from myself. On the contrary, science has conducted numerous interesting studies on the question of what being grateful does to us or expressing gratitude and appreciation to others.

A study from Harvard Medical School found that when appreciation is displayed and communicated, people rise in three areas: feeling valued, strengthening emotional connections, and personal loyalty.

And in another study from Gallup the researchers found that the number one reason people quit their jobs is due to lack of recognition and appreciation. The list of factors she found increasing our happiness has gratitude in the first place! But how can I practice that? I encourage you to just give it a try and start with a gratitude practice of your choice today. You may want to try out one of the following:. And it is also not silver lining them. But it supports us to balance the negativity bias we have in our brain that results from evolution.

We tend to see what is not working and has not been perfect or might be a differentiator between us and others somehow comparison. One group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. A second group wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them, and the third wrote about events that had affected them with no emphasis on them being positive or negative.

After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation.

Another leading researcher in this field, Dr. Martin E. Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, tested the impact of various positive psychology interventions on people, each compared with a control assignment of writing about early memories. When their week's assignment was to write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for his or her kindness, participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores.

This impact was greater than that from any other intervention, with benefits lasting for a month. Of course, studies such as this one cannot prove cause and effect. But most of the studies published on this topic support an association between gratitude and an individual's well-being.

Other studies have looked at how being grateful can improve relationships. For example, a study of couples found that individuals who took time to express gratitude for their partner not only felt more positive toward the other person but also felt more comfortable expressing concerns about their relationship.

Managers who remember to say "thank you" to people who work for them may find that those employees feel motivated to work harder. Researchers at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania randomly divided university fund-raisers into two groups. According to Harvard happiness researcher Shawn Achor, doing this for 21 days will train your brain to look at the world in a different way.

It will start to scan the world for positives instead of for threats. Write them in list form and do it for 21 days. According to Achor, as you remember positive experiences, your brain labels it as meaningful and the imprint in your brain deepens.

The idea is that after 21 days it will become a habit and it will change the way your brain looks at and receives the world. Whether or not you send it is up to you. The effect of this stays for months after the initial exercise. One of the changes were a greater sensitivity to gratitude. What this means is that noticing the good now makes it easier to notice the good later. Gratitude rewires our brain so we become more likely to focus on the positives in the world than the negatives.

Our brains will always seek the things that keep us safe, but we also need the things that nurture our happiness and emotional well-being.

I love this article!! I started posting on my instagram story each day, asking people to share a happy experience or something they were grateful for that day. It lifted me, but I also got responses that thanked me for posting a gratitude reminder. Gratitude really can do wonders. Hi Karen I really enjoyed reading this article. I am currently studying positive psychology, this has given me a new perspective and some areas too research.

So Thank you very much. I needed this kind of article earlier but it is an amazing article by the way. Gratitude is important and necessary in daily life and every successful person practices everyday. I believe in this wholeheartedly…. Sometimes when another seems so ungtrateful for things she has received from me I can see clearly the bitterness that is involved…… This has put a terrible stress on me…..

But with small acts of gratitude I am able to still be whole and not too broken…….. Thank you for a timely reminder and a beautiful piece on gratitude. I am grateful to you for this….. I needed this! I make a gratitude post on Facebook every single night before bed.

Have done this for 4 or 5 years now, and it has changed my life. Doing it on FB made me accountable to others, so it kept me going. The cool thing is that there are dozens of people who look for my post now every day, and comment occasionally on how much they enjoy reading them. I started doing this to get rid of the negatives that were keeping me awake at night.

It put better things on my mind, and yes, I started seeing life differently. A timely read as I deal with a relationship where gratitude is so distant. Thank you. I will continue to keep sharing your work as the articles you write on anxiety have done wonders for me and I believe in the. I love the open-hearts and the warmth and wisdom of the people who visit and leave comments.

This friend I used to have had a habit of saying she was sorry all the time and it just made me crazy because really, there was nothing to be sorry for usually. Finally one time I told her the next time I catch her saying that for no reason she had to stop what she was doing and tell me five things she liked about herself.

Hi Amit, Came across your blog for the first time and I must say I am impressed! It took me about 20 mins to read through the entire post. I mean really read not skim through. The effort that you have put in is evident in the post. Have you considered writing a book? All the best for the book.

Sure would like to share your book with my audience. Perhaps, we can schedule a short interview too once the book is done? That would be fantastic! Amit, A very good and incisive piece. Do one thing for me please. I am not asking you to be religious but to enter a personal relationship with the Almighty God, The creator of all things. However, because of my upbringing, personality, and life experience, I do not think there is any chance of that happening.

I appreciate your words though. Try this,…. Being kind to not only others but also being kind to yourself can change your life. Helping others as much as possible and helping myself through patience and love.

The only thing they have left is the clothes on their backs! I personally only donate to givewell. Thanks for sharing! Would you be able to e-mail me a copy of your paper amit happierhuman. M G Hiremath,. Love all of these points and just like so many emotions have an opposite, gratitude leads to happiness, as you so well point out and that leads to less stress, less neurotransmitters firing the fight or flight signal which causes more stress to the entire body and in the extreme, leads to PTSD with all of its manifestations.

I love most of all the time you spent on the hyperlink grid which leads to various points with synonyms in your post. Made me laugh. I am clipping and sharing. Amit, this is an awesome list of the benefits of gratitude. I found my way here from the AList club and read through this particular post because I had written an article on how to keep a gratitude journal and wanted to read your ideas on the topic. You have really done some good research. Gratitude has some far-reaching effects.

Yes, because gratitude is so effective in increasing happiness, and because happiness in turn is so effective in improving our lives, gratitude has some far-reaching effects. Much like your experience, some of the most radiant moments of my day are when I do gratitude meditation. Hope you can use this information to your benefit because the misuse of a non-word might make you look a little unbelievable. I need to stop trusting online dictionaries. Why do you stop yourself from being spiritual?

If you have the overwhelming feeling of a good, loving God, why not accept it? Your philosophy of being happy and grateful all go back to God. Similar to this, I believe that secular moralism and spiritual adherence coincide quiet well. If one follows the teachings of God, they are likely to be compassionate, devout, honest, etc… I believe if one wishes to make the best use of their biology secular moralism , I believe they too will make the choice to be compassionate, devout, honest, etc….

Although perhaps your belief then is that God made our biology in such a way that gratitude, compassion, etc… are the most rewarded emotions e. I enjoy reading the information on your page. I kind of get what you are saying, but I believe we as humans begin to think we have more power than we really do.

I too feel connected spiritually and allow that feeling to progress. I feel people are afraid of the idea of an all powerful God. I do believe God made us to be naturally compassionate and good people. Although secular moralism is helpful to others I am not sure how that would work because from a young age, I have believed in God.

Hello, Amit…. This is an amazing article, thank you for taking the time to compile all these resources and put it all together! This is an amazing article! Wow Amit, impressive post chocked full of useful info! I am very grateful for your post, grateful for the internet, this computer to type on, my fingers to type with, my eyes to read this and my brain for being able to process this.

Read it twice. I have sent or hand delivered over thank you cards since the beginning of february. I feel totally calm. I have some serious challenges with work, but I can handle it. I would wish to provide a enormous thumbs up for the great info you could have here about this post. We are coming back to your blog for further soon. This is a fabulous article. Thank you for the level of detail that you have included along with the graphics. I work as a dating coach and I am constantly talking to my clients about the practice of gratitude.

One of my primary motivations for practicing gratitude is so that I can be a better partner. It just makes the entire interaction more pleasent. We are a gaggle of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your web site provided us with valuable info to work on. You have done an impressive process and our entire neighborhood can be grateful to you. THank you for the effort you have put in to compile the research findings systematically and in simple english.

Could you help me locate the references which you have marked like a1 a2 a3 a4. A fine piece that I will share. I just emailed the author this response: I like this overview of gratitude and its benefits. I think you have misunderstood something important. Also, on the Buddhist path, one can be overflowing with gratitude without having a notion of God. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, God is the great Mystery who births forth this cosmos and cannot be contained by any image, concept, name or theory.

In Christianity, this is called the apophatic dimension of spiritual practice. Let go into the gratitude that is continuously flowing throughout all creation and you are in the deep flow of something that is coming through you, but something that you do not own and you did not create. This is a powerful experience, beyond words, ideology and ego. Amit, Thank you for your post! It was fascinating. I do have one question for you, if gratefulness makes you closer to God, why do you keep pushing him away?

From your perspective, the word push might seem appropriate, but from mine that word is not quite right. My estimate of the probability that god exists is. The scientific research on gratitude is exactly that — scientific, and therefore does nothing to shift my probability estimate. I really liked the gratitude vs wining the lottery graph you have here so I wanted to make sure that it is supported but the papers you cite.

As it turns out, in the Brickman et al. So, I am not quite sure where your data for the graph come from. Please advise if you used another paper to create this graph, whether you just misread the paper, or and I hope not purposefully mislead your readers. I have a clear memory of getting the data from a longitudinal study, but as you said, the paper I cited is no such thing. A quick literature search turned up papers which suggest the opposite of what I originally claimed — that winning the lottery does in fact create small but significant long-term increases in happiness.

Again, thank you for pointing this out. It would be great if I had someone looking over my shoulder to check my work, but for now, this is a one-man labor of love. Nice article and thoroughly researched. I am grateful to you for the article.

So thorough on the benefits of gratitude. With that amount of benefits, I wonder if there are people who dismiss the idea of gratitude because if they do, they are losing out on lots of things. There are plenty of people who dismiss the idea of gratitude.

The wisdom traditions are right are wise! Besides thanksgiving which you covered very well, faith, forgiveness, and a merry heart are good for you too. Be careful. Indeed, as your blog suggests, gratitude is a powerful dose of medicine, and without any negative side-effects, too, working far better than focusing on self-esteem, for me at least.

Not only being grateful, but taking it to the next level by doing something positive to express this gratitude. Gratitude in action. This focus away from myself and towards a mission to express gratitude is what makes the past seem significant only for the purposes of learning spiritual lessons. Gratitude is THE attitude to have. And, I happen to believe in a higher benevolent Being and that I have a mission in life, with that mission being to fix myself in a spiritual way.

This combination works to make a very fulfilling life. Fantastic blog! So detailed and interactive! What fun. I especially loved the diagram at the very beginning. Dear Amit, I loved this article and especially the image that summarizes all the benefits in such a concise way.

Thank you for the time and energy you devoted to writing it. I want to share your knowledge because I think it is very valuable. Please let me know if this is ok with you. Hi Patti! Hi Amit, this is a great website with lots of info, thanks!

And Thanks for sharing the book! You gathered a helluva lot of information from many authentic sources, it seems. It really beats me I must mention that I am a first-time visitor to your blog how could you ferret out so much of readable material for a topic of Gratitude!

I really appreciate your list. As a woman, I did not take that as an especially helpful message. Hi, very informative post. Gratitude is the greatest of all virtues in life. Thanks for sharing a positive post. Hey man that was a phenomenal read, so simply yet artisticly put! I am an avid student of positive psychology and have started a pay it forward movement we call smile tag to help spread the awesome information this budding field teaches.

God bless. This is one of the best life changing readings i came accrosee when i search for gratitude kindness respect and thankfulness. Thanks to you and im sharing this with my family. I am a psychologist and direct a nonprofit program. Thank you for putting it together so well! I never knew the Gratitude is so much Powerful. We can make Life Happy with Gratitude Thanks. Hi, Amit! This post was a blessing! I was curently in a sad-for-no-reason mood, and reading this definitely changed my mind about how I feel beyond things in life.

I feel a lot more grateful now. I even have the disposition to stand up and do some push-ups! Not so far, I believe. Thanks a lot for running this blog. You sure are a good person, sir! I am really enjoying it. I am writing some contents about Gratitude , benefit of Gratitude etc.

I have found few things very interesting in your blog , for e. I wish to take few contents from your blog , with your permission. Wow, what an incredible post! And looking at the first comment, what an amazing amount of work you put into it! I hope you have reaped as much benefit from your work as I am sure everyone who has read the post has! I am a big advocate of gratitude as a way to improve life, having seen countless benefits of it in my own life. Thank you so much for this post, it has been really helpful and I am sure I will come back to it.

Hi Amit, Yes, research takes hours and hours, sometimes. But this is the way I write my articles. I cannot do it any other way because then everything just becomes opinions and opinions are not always correct. I can appreciate an article with thoroughness, as nothing is left unanswered and questionable. Giving the public researched and thorough work is being true to your profession. Thank you so much, I am grateful for good writing! This is great Amin.

I really appreciate all that you put together here. We do a lot of work at helping people release pain, both physical and emotional.

Gratitude is unquestionably a big ingredient in both releasing pain and allowing it not to return.