Doses of Gratitude

In my happiness workshop* (which I wrote for my school practicum in 2017), I taught about the medicinal effects of gratitude. I touched on this briefly in this post about depression, but just to give a little more detail, people who are consistently grateful have been found to:**

• Feel happier
• Feel more energetic
• Feel more hopeful
• Report more positive emotions
• Feel less depressed
• Feel less lonely
• Feel less anxious
• Feel less envious
• Feel less neurotic

Additionally, gratitude boosts happiness in several ways. Gratitude:***

1. Promotes savoring of life's experiences - "Enjoy every moment! It goes by so fast!"
2. Supports self-worth and self-esteem - For many people, it's natural to focus on failures and disappointments. Gratitude can help break this cycle. 
3. Helps people cope with stress and trauma - in the days following 9/11, gratitude was the second highest reported emotion after sympathy. 
4. Encourages moral behavior - Grateful people are more likely to help others. 
5. Helps build social bonds, strengthen existing relationships, and develop new relationships - if you are grateful for a person, even in you never tell them, you tend to treat them better. 
6. Inhibits unwarranted comparisons with others
7. Diminishes feelings of anger, bitterness, and greed
8. Helps thwart hedonic adaptation - adaptation to positive things is the enemy to happiness. 

One of my favorite studies on gratitude was done by Martin Seligman, who is one of the prominent researchers in positive psychology.

Seligman had his participants think of someone who'd had an impact on their lives whom they had not yet thanked. Then he asked them to write a letter of gratitude to that person and deliver it in person.

Immediately after the participants delivered their letters, they reported increased levels of happiness. A week later, they still reported higher levels of happiness. Then one month later, they were still happier than the control group.****

I imagine you can easily see why I think of gratitude as medicine.

Lately I've been feeling a little selfish and ungrateful, so in an effort to redirect my emotions, I thought I should turn to gratitude. I need a few consistent doses.

I found this cute, little writing prompt several months ago and saved it. I'm going to utilize it to guide my posts for the next couple of weeks so I can get my gratitude on.

*Someday I intend to make some video presentations or a blog series of my workshops. 
**These are correlational findings and not necessarily causal (Lyubomirsky, 2008).
***(Lyubomirsky, 2008).
****A lot of the research I used in my workshop came from Sonja Lyubomirsky. I read several of her research studies and her book, and I also watched some presentations she has done. I really loved her work, and the study from Martin Seligman made me want to thank Dr. Lyubomirksy for her work and her research. I tracked down an email address for her and sent her a letter, and she wrote me back, which made me totally geek out.