Expressing gratitude has become trendy; these days, you can easily find a stock of gratitude journals and notebooks at your local stationery store or bookseller, or search for tips on how to express gratitude in your life.
You’ll get the biggest health benefits of gratitude when it becomes habitual and part of your thought process.
As it turns out, all this expression of gratitude is a good thing for our minds and bodies. In a new article in the National Communication Association’s Review of Communication, authors Stephen M. Yoshimura and Kassandra Berzins explore the connection between gratitude expression and psychological and physical well-being. As one might expect, positivity begets positive results for our well-being.
What the authors write may seem obvious: “Gratitude consistently associates with many positive social, psychological, and health states, such as an increased likelihood of helping others, optimism, exercise, and reduced reports of physical symptoms.” However, the authors argue that not enough research has been done on the communication of gratitude and its effect on well-being, and they propose further avenues for analysis of the messages and their impact.
Expressions of thankfulness are often a response to others’ acts of generosity — if you receive a gift from someone, or an act of kindness, you reciprocate by showing gratitude, sometimes publicly, to highlight the giver’s altruistic act. This is a different emotion from happiness because it so often stems from the actions of another individual. “To experience it, one must receive a message, and interpret the message,” the authors write.
Numerous studies show that expressing and experiencing gratitude increases life satisfaction, vitality, hope, and optimism. Moreover, it contributes to decreased levels of depression, anxiety, envy, and job-related stress and burnout. Perhaps most intriguing is that people who experience and express it have reported fewer symptoms of physical illness, more exercise, and better quality of sleep. Who wouldn’t be grateful for that?
10 benefits of gratitude:
- Support heart health
- Improve depression symptoms
- Improve sleep
- Boost your mood
- Supports a healthy diet
- Adds focus to exercise
- Reduces the risk of heart disease
- Help you notice the positive in life
- Reminds us what is important
- Helps strengthen relationships
One practice you can do anytime to experience the benefits of gratitude is to take a moment to reflect back on a previous time that you felt grateful. It could be a time you were the recipient of kindness or achieved success, a moment where you appreciated your health, your home, or a talent or quality you possess. Perhaps it was a moment you enjoyed a celebration or being with a loved one. It can be a recent memory or from when you were young. Just choose any moment you remember being full of gratitude.
While the immediate effects of gratitude expression are clear, the authors argue that it also contributes to long-term success in relationships and personal well-being — “up to six months after a deliberate expression to one’s relationship’s partner.” Just as we periodically boost our immune systems through vaccines, we can boost our relationships and mental state by expressing gratitude to our partners on a regular basis. The authors leave us with a general health practice: Why not regularly communicate gratitude to enhance our social connectedness?
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