Do you ever feel grateful for the good things in your life? If not, you should start practicing gratitude every day! It has been shown to have many health benefits, including reducing stress levels and improving sleep quality. Many people find it helpful to keep a gratitude journal, where they write down things they are thankful for each day. Here, we will discuss some health benefits of gratitude and how you can start incorporating it into your life.
1. Gratitude Alleviates Pain
It has been shown that gratitude suggests it can alleviate some pains. In one study, participants were asked to rate their pain level after completing a task. The results showed that those who had written about things they were grateful for experienced less pain than those who had not. This suggests that gratitude can be a helpful tool in managing chronic pain.
2. Grateful People Make Better Choices with Food
If you are trying to eat healthier, gratitude may be a tool that can help you make better choices. One study found that participants who wrote about things they were grateful for were more likely to make healthy food choices than those who did not. This is likely because gratitude helps us focus on the positive aspects of our lives, which in turn can help us to make better choices.
3. Gratitude Improves Sleep Quality
Grateful “sleep” is just better! A study from 2011 published in Applied Psychology; Health and Wellbeing shows that just by writing a journal, writing down the things you are grateful for and happy about can benefit your nightly routine and improve your sleeping.
4. Gratitude Can Change Your Brain
Being grateful or implementing gratitude in your everyday life can reduce a plethora of bad thoughts and toxic ways of experiencing emotions even when they are bad. Gratitude has scientifically proven it can help you even with things such as reacting out or being jealous, experiencing hardships or being in a dark mindset. It’s a “little thing” to incorporate in your life and it has such a great and big impact on your life.
Ph.D Robert Emmons, has literally written the book on gratitude in our time and conducted various research and papers on the topic. It is clear from Dr. Robert Emmons findings, that Gratitude can be a positive life changing with great mental and physical benefits.