When we express gratitude, our brains release chemicals like dopamine and serotonin, which are associated with happiness and reduced stress. In fact, studies have found that individuals who regularly practice gratitude experience lower levels of depression and anxiety. Reduced Stress.

Gratitude can act as a powerful stress-reduction tool. When we focus on the positive aspects of our lives, we shift our attention away from stressors and anxieties.

This mental reframing can help lower stress levels and improve our overall sense of well-being. Improved Emotional Resilience.

Gratitude can enhance our ability to cope with challenging situations. When we appreciate the good in our lives, it becomes easier to navigate adversity with a positive outlook, making us more emotionally resilient. Gratitude helps us recognize our own worth and accomplishments.

This can boost self-esteem and confidence, mitigating feelings of inadequacy or self-doubt. Better Relationships. Judith T. Moskowitz, a psychologist at Northwestern University. Moskowitz has been studying the impact of keeping a daily gratitude journal on stress relief and health.

Practicing gratitude is part of a set of skills that her research team encourages people to practice. These skills have been shown to help some people increase their positive emotions. Her team is trying to better understand how a daily boost in positive emotions can help people cope with stress and improve their mental and physical health.

It also works with the daily stress that we all deal with. Ultimately, it can help you be not just happier but also healthier. These include meditating and doing small acts of kindness. Her team has been developing and testing these skills with people who have illnesses like advanced cancer, diabetes, HIV infection, and depression.

When you make gratitude a regular habit, it can help you learn to recognize good things in your life despite the bad things that might be happening.

Mindfulness Training Can Promote Healthy Choices. Yoga for Health: A New e-Book. In fact, it was the lack of negative emotion words—not the abundance of positive words—that explained the mental health gap between the gratitude writing group and the other writing group.

When you write about how grateful you are to others and how much other people have blessed your life, it might become considerably harder for you to ruminate on your negative experiences. Read a special white paper on the science of gratitude —explaining where it comes from, what its benefits are, and how to cultivate it.

Discover the six habits of highly grateful people. Learn what stops gratitude. Find out how gratitude can help you through hard times. How grateful are you?

Take our gratitude quiz and try these gratitude practices! In fact, only 23 percent of participants who wrote gratitude letters sent them. This suggests that the mental health benefits of writing gratitude letters are not entirely dependent on actually communicating that gratitude to another person.

But the mere act of writing the letter can help you appreciate the people in your life and shift your focus away from negative feelings and thoughts. Although the different groups in our study did not differ in mental health levels one week after the end of the writing activities, individuals in the gratitude group reported better mental health than the others four weeks after the writing activities, and this difference in mental health became even larger 12 weeks after the writing activities.

These results are encouraging because many other studies suggest that the mental health benefits of positive activities often decrease rather than increase over time afterward.

Perhaps the gratitude letter writers discussed what they wrote in their letters with their counselors or with others. These conversations may have reinforced the psychological benefits derived from the gratitude writing itself.

Be patient and remember that the benefits of gratitude might take time to kick in. We wanted to know if their brains were processing information differently. Our participants then decided how much of the money, if any, to pass on to a worthy cause and we did in fact donate that money to a local charity.

We wanted to distinguish donations motivated by gratitude from donations driven by other motivations, like feelings of guilt or obligation. We also gave them questionnaires to measure how grateful they are in their lives in general.

offers research-based strategies to support your well-being and help build a culture of gratitude in your organization. We found that across the participants, when people felt more grateful, their brain activity was distinct from brain activity related to guilt and the desire to help a cause.

More specifically, we found that when people who are generally more grateful gave more money to a cause, they showed greater neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area associated with learning and decision making.

Researchers have found that those who experience more positive moods have less anxiety and tend to view situations more optimistically. In a study on gratitude and appreciation, participants who felt grateful showed a reduction in the level of cortisol, the stress hormone.

They had stronger cardiac functioning and were more resilient to emotional setbacks and negative experiences. Over the years, studies have established that practicing gratitude allows us to handle stress better. Keeping a gratitude journal or consistently verbalizing gratitude can help manage negative emotions like guilt and shame.

Grateful people are healthy people. Practicing gratitude slows the effects of neurodegeneration and leads to decreased inflammation and lower blood pressure. Researchers have shown when we practice appreciation, our bodies release the oxytocin hormone, which expands blood vessels, reduces blood pressure, and protects your heart.

Oxytocin deepens our relationships and helps us feel more connected to others. It also supports us in building a network of family and friends, which results in a longer and healthier life. Studies have also shown that grateful people eat healthy, move their bodies more, and are less likely to abuse alcohol or other drugs.

Accepting happiness makes us grateful for all that we have and, over time, makes us stronger. Praising our efforts prepares us for the difficulties we may have to manage in the future. Practicing gratitude and compassion is always essential—this intentional behavior creates a trickle-down effect.

If you are kind to yourself and grateful toward others, people start taking your lead, and before you know it, the world is a more thoughtful and kind place. Health Care Home Healthfeed 11 Practicing Gratitude for Better Health and Well-Being.

Nov 19, There are simple, easy things you can do to start a daily gratitude practice: Self-appreciation: Daily, practice saying five good things about yourself.

Research supports that stance. In fact, studies indicate that simply writing about your gratitude can improve your mood and mental health.

So, how about starting a gratitude journal? You can even mix things up. Keep it in your phone or computer. Store it in the cloud.

Write words one day, take a picture the next, a video the next. Some great ideas start well and vanish quickly.

Having a partner adds accountability. Try to pick a time of day and commit that time to your journal. Five or 10 minutes will work.

You can always spend more time, but you have to start somewhere. Proponents of developing good habits say that if you can do something 21 days in a row, it becomes part of your routine.

In any discipline, you must have rigor. But you can let it emerge over time. A gift. A friend. Gas in the car. One of the benefits of keeping a gratitude journal is that you can revisit your entries.

They can pick you up on a rough day, and they can sharpen your awareness anytime. Follow Us on Social Media.

Editor: Harrison Wein, Ph. Managing Editor: Tianna Hicklin, Ph. Illustrator: Alan Defibaugh. Attention Editors: Reprint our articles and illustrations in your own publication. Our material is not copyrighted. Please acknowledge NIH News in Health as the source and send us a copy.

For more consumer health news and information, visit health. For wellness toolkits, visit www. Site Menu Home. March Print this issue. En español Send us your comments. Related Stories. Back to Top. The virtual month-long program consists of daily journaling about thankfulness, mindfulness and kindness on journal sheets.

Acknowledging gratitude and being mindful support a positive shift to improve your mental well-being and health. Amanda Logan is a nurse practitioner in Family Medicine in Janesville , Minnesota. Skip to main content. Posted By. Amanda Logan, C. Family Medicine, Primary Care. Recent Posts. Speaking of Health.

Topics in this Post. What's the right amount of gratitude? Behavior changes biology Remember that behavior changes biology. Track your gratitude Another idea is to keep a gratitude journal.