Gratitude is an incredibly powerful positive emotion that has lasting beneficial effects in all the areas of our lives. Our health, emotions, social life, and even our career can benefit from a daily gratitude practice.  An attitude of gratitude not just stops negativity in its tracks, but also creates a positivity loop: as we express gratitude, we feel more gratitude, express even more gratitude, and so on and so on. 

In addition to my nightly mental review of what I’m thankful for having experienced that day, I’ve been spending five minutes each morning actually writing out things I am grateful for since the beginning of October. I’ve seen huge changes since integrating my evening thankfulness into my life, so I wasn’t expecting much of a change by writing things out each morning, but I was wrong! Starting my day with a list of things I am grateful for creates a sense of well being and motivation that gets my day running full force and makes me more aware of more things I am grateful for throughout my days.

I swear there must be a thousand benefits of gratitude, but I figured just starting with ten might get you motivated to start creating a daily attitude of gratitude in your life.  So here’s a quick list for you:

• Better Sleep: Instead of focusing on your worry or anxiety, think about the things you’re grateful for. This tiny shift in mindset allows our body to leave the tense “fight or flight” mode and induces the body’s relaxation response. Being grateful allows you to fall asleep faster, get better sleep quality, and sleep longer. 

• More Energy: On top of better sleep giving you more energy, gratitude itself actually increases your physical and mental well being which increases your energy. Again, that positive loop thing I talked about earlier kicks in here: increased gratitude leads to more energy leads to more gratitude.

• More Relaxed: Even if you’re not trying to go to sleep, spending time focusing on your gratitude allows the body’s relaxation response to kick in. So if you find yourself focused on worry or stress during the day, take a moment to breathe and be grateful for a few things. Like other positive emotions, gratitude is just a natural relaxant.

• Less Envy: Envy can easily be defined as the combination of jealousy and inadequacy. When you focus on what you are grateful for, you remove jealousy of others and kill feelings of inadequacy. Gratitude and envy cannot exist within us at the same time. The more time you’re focused on gratitude, the less time you’re spending feeling jealous and inadequate.

• More Friendly: Experiencing someone else’s gratitude helps us perceive kindness and we tend to want to reciprocate kindness and gratitude. In general, increased happiness and increased energy that gratitude creates are linked to pro-social behaviors, making us feel and act more friendly to people.

• Deeper Relationships: Similar to feeling more friendly, gratitude increases feelings of appreciation for and feeling appreciated by our friends. The better we feel, the more likely we are to contribute to deeper and lasting relationships through showing our appreciation toward our friends and family.

• More Optimistic: Since optimism is a focus on the good rather than the bad, it’s easy to see that gratitude has a strong correlation with optimism. The more gratitude we express and feel, the more we are able to believe that our life is good. And if our current life is good, then it makes sense to believe future life will be good. See how that optimism kicked in there?

• Less Materialistic: When you experience and express gratitude more, you will find yourself comparing yourself to others and what you have to what others have a lot less frequently than you did before. As you compare less, you will find your insecurity and materialism naturally begin to disappear.

• Improved Decision Making: Let’s face it, decision making is exhausting. Thankfully, gratitude gives us a boost in energy and motivation that allows making decisions a much easier process.

• Increased Productivity: Here is a simple gratitude math equation for you. Gratitude-increased self-esteem plus gratitude-decreased insecurity equals more focus and more productivity.

I won’t lie to you – it takes time to develop the habit of gratitude. However, it doesn’t need to take up a lot of time each day. Just by journaling five minutes a day about what you’re grateful for will show a massive affect in your life within just a few months. When you consider how many benefits there are to having a gratitude practice, it’s hard to deny that gratitude is an incredible tool to improve our daily happiness.

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