3 Proven Ways Gratitude Benefits You
Thanksgiving is a holiday best used to set forth an intention to have a grateful heart. Gathering around your holiday table and seeing all the happy, healthy smiles, is the perfect time to focus on the feeling of gratitude and instill it every day.
This leads me to share three ways that gratitude benefits you. Gratitude is not just something that makes you feel good in the moment. It can also have a big impact on your health, which can really be an inspiration to make gratitude a daily practice.
#1 Change Your Brain!
Practicing gratitude daily changes your brain’s chemical makeup by boosting your happy hormones, such as dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine helps you feel really good and fulfilled, and serotonin helps regulate your sleep, on top of improving your mood.
Research by UC Davis shows that gratitude is responsible for lowering the stress hormone cortisol by about 23%. Some of you may think that lowering cortisol levels seems counterintuitive, especially if you’re adrenally fatigued.
However, most people who experience chronic fatigue and exhaustion have an overproduction of cortisol, meaning that there is a huge benefit to your nervous system in lowering cortisol. The big boost of positive hormones can actually help balance out the effects of chronic fatigue syndrome.
#2 Increase Resiliency
The second way that gratitude affects your health is that it increases your resilience to stress, anxiety, and adversity. There are even some studies that support this:
-Psychology Today states that in 2006, a behavior research and therapy study found that war vets who experienced gratitude found lower rates of post-traumatic stress disorder.
-In 2003, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that gratitude was a major contributor to resilience following terrorist attacks on September 11th.
Gratitude is not about suppressing or ignoring thoughts and memories. Instead, it's a practice that balances out stress and negativity in life. Gratitude allows you to feel positive levels of appreciation despite challenges and stressors.
#3 Improve Your Self-Image
The third way that gratitude benefits you is by helping improve your self-image. When you put gratitude and warm energy out into the world, you receive that back. Think of the time that you were out and about and a stranger did something nice. Maybe someone smiled at you, or someone did a random act of kindness. This makes you want to pay it forward, and that warm energy is shared and amplified.
The more you give, the more you get, and in turn, it creates a better self-perception. You focus less on fear-based thoughts and instead feel grateful for a nice conversation, or that you received a compliment. Gratitude can change your entire perspective.
Lastly, I want to share the best time to practice gratitude. While any time is great, the ideal time is right when you wake up. Take a moment, before you think of anything else, in your cozy resting headspace, when your brain levels are moving slowly and your subconscious mind is open and spongy, and start thinking about all the things that you're grateful for in life.
Think about things that you were grateful for yesterday and the things that you are grateful for right now. Think of anything and everything and just marinate in the feeling of gratitude. You can also add this practice to your evening routine, right before you drift off to sleep.