Expressing Gratitude All Year Round
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To almost everyone, November is widely anticipated for one thing: Thanksgiving. With Thanksgiving comes the overindulgence in food and family and perhaps football as well. It is also a time to give thanks and express gratitude—a tradition that many families practice every year. However, many only express gratitude on Thanksgiving day, thus individuals disregard the act of doing so until the next year when the holiday rolls around again. Giving thanks provides health benefits, and the more you express gratitude, the longer those benefits last.
What is Gratitude?
The word “gratitude” is derived from the Latin term “gratus,” which means grateful or pleasing. Giving gratitude is a selfless act. Actions that show appreciation are done unconditionally to articulate to others that they are recognized and valued, and it can cause a rippling effect, where individuals will be moved to pass on their gratefulness.
In a study conducted by Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet and her colleagues at Hope College, results confirmed the hypothesis that gratitude is strongly associated with greater happiness and hope. Other studies in psychology have demonstrated that showing gratitude for any reason is linked to positive effects, including stronger social relationships and more positive emotions, to just name a few.
Gratitude and Its Role in Positive Psychology
According to Dr. Robert Emmons, the founding editor-in-chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology, gratitude involves two stages:
Acknowledging that there is goodness in our lives – we need to identify that there are things in our lives that make us happy and serve as our motivation to complete something or feel a positive emotion. Gratitude impels us to think about the bright aspects and allows us to question the sources of our gratitude.
Recognizing that some reasons for this goodness lie outside of the self – true gratitude involves considering how those surrounding us have impacted our lives in a positive way; we concede that people help us achieve happiness and goodness even if sacrifices were made along the way.
Benefits of Giving Thanks
Picture a web chart with the title “Gratitude” at the very top. That bubble is branched into five different components that gratitude impacts, starting with “emotional” then looping into “social”, “career,” “health” and “personality” until the bubble makes its way back to “emotional,” making a full circle. Inside the five components lies “Happiness,” and that term is linked to each of the five aspects. The web can be found here. Of these five, let’s delve into two: emotional and health benefits.
Emotional Benefits
Increase happiness. People who take time every day—even if it’s only for five minutes—to express gratitude have been shown to enhance their protracted happiness by over 10 percent.
Increase self-esteem. In an experiment conducted by Joshua Rash and colleagues concerning the relationship between gratitude and overall well-being and self-esteem, participants who completed a four-week contemplation intervention program reported feeling greater life satisfaction and self-esteem.
Health Benefits
Improve sleep. Results showed that individuals who participated in a two-week gratitude intervention increased their sleep quality and decreased their blood pressure. If you are having difficulty falling to sleep, trying even a quick gratitude exercise before bed could improve your situation.
Reduce symptoms of depression. A study on gratitude visits revealed that participants experienced a 35 percent reduction in depressive symptoms for a few weeks. However, the effects disappeared after a month. This means that continuously expressing one’s gratitude will sustain the effect or any of the positive effects mentioned above for the matter.
Ways to Cultivate Gratitude
While learning about the benefits of expressing gratitude is beneficial, these results are only produced if one actually gets into the habit of doing so. Here are some of the popular ways to practice and enhance your gratitude:
Journaling
Numerous studies involving gratitude, such as the ones mentioned above, manipulate their hypotheses by incorporating the idea of having participants write down what they are thankful for. The purpose of this particular exercise is to reflect on past memories and thoughts and focus on happy moments.
Letters/Emails/Texts
This gratitude method is perhaps the most powerful and impactful of all. Writing a letter, email or even sending a text to someone detailing why you are grateful and appreciative of him or her goes a long way to letting them know that they are thought of and cared about. To further boost someone’s joy, make sure that this act is done unexpectedly. If it’s a letter, hand deliver it to the addressee.
Gratitude Box
The gratitude jar or box is a simple exercise to share your feelings with loved ones. Give everyone a slip of paper and pencil and have them write down one person or thing that they are grateful for and have them put it into a box or basket. Then, pass the box or basket around and have everyone read someone else’s paper and reveal who it belongs to.
People often think that giving thanks is specifically designed for Thanksgiving, but that should not be the case. Expressing what you are grateful for and why you are grateful all year round leads to many benefits, such as increasing one’s happiness and overall well-being and improving one’s sleep quality. If you have someone that you are grateful for, tell them so that they know they are loved and appreciated.
