Why You Should Embrace Gratitude Practice

Happy Thanksgiving! (to those living in the United States)

Thanksgiving is a good time to remind ourselves and acknowledge the things we are grateful for. But, let’s not stop here. Incorporating gratitude practice in our daily life can provide numerous health benefits, both physically and mentally as shown by scientific studies.

What is Gratitude?

In the field of psychology, scientists conceptualize gratitude into two parts¹:

State gratitude is the ability to recognize and appraise received benefits from others or any other external sources.
Trait gratitude is a wider orientation towards noticing and being grateful for the positive in the world, feeling sufficiency and appreciating the little things in life.

Both state gratitude and trait gratitude were found to be beneficial for physical and mental health.

Health Benefits of Gratitude Practice

Research on the health benefits of gratitude practice has gained more interest and traction about a decade ago. Here is a summary of what studies have shown so far.

Mental Health

The mental health benefits of gratitude practice may seem to be more intuitive. Gratitude practice has been shown to¹:

Promote emotional well-being including happiness, life satisfaction, positive affect, and overall subjective well-being.
Promote psychological well-being including meaning of life, optimism, resilience, and hope.
Build resilience for and reducing the risk for mental health problems, through increased mental well-being.

Physical Health

The interrelation between the mind and the body has long been recognized in ancient healing arts as well as in modern psychosomatic medical field.

Gratitude practice has been shown to improve physical health by¹:

Reducing inflammation.²
Improving sleep, thus mitigating the negative health impacts of sleep deprivation and dysregulation.
Regulating reactivity to stressful events or stressors³, thus mitigating the negative health impacts from stress. Some of the negative health impacts from stress include suppression of immune function, blood glucose dysregulation, obesity, digestive disorders, etc. (See “Why Stress is the Culprit” for details.)
Increasing proclivity for healthy activities and lifestyle.⁴

Social Well-being

Gratitude practice also promotes social well-being including positive social behavior and social integration, improved sense of belonging, and healthy relationships and formation of new relationships.¹

How to Incorporate Gratitude Practice

Here are some simple tips to incorporate gratitude practice in our daily life:

Keeping a gratitude journal to record things/events/persons that one is grateful for during the past day(s).
Spending a few minutes before going to bed or upon waking recalling things/events/persons that one is grateful for during the past day.
Writing a gratitude letter to someone one is grateful for but whom his/she has never properly thanked. One could choose to read the content of the letter out loud to the intended recipient.
Explicitly expressing gratitude to the person you are grateful for right at the moment or soon after you receive benefits from the person.
Showing your gratitude to appreciative actions.

I am sure you can come up with other and more creative ways to incorporate gratitude practice in your life! 😊

Why Stress is the Culprit

References

Jans-Beken L, Jacobs N, Janssens M et al. Gratitude and health: An updated review. J Posit Psychol. 2019:1-40. doi:10.1080/17439760.2019.1651888
Hartanto, A., Lee, S., & Yong, J. C. (2019). Dispositional Gratitude Moderates the Association between Socioeconomic Status and Interleukin-6. Scientific reports, 9(1), 802. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-37109-1
Vieselmeyer J, Holguin J, Mezulis A. The role of resilience and gratitude in posttraumatic stress and growth following a campus shooting. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. 2017;9(1):62-69. doi:10.1037/tra0000149
Hill P, Allemand M, Roberts B. Examining the pathways between gratitude and self-rated physical health across adulthood. Pers Individ Dif. 2013;54(1):92-96. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2012.08.011