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Can practicing gratitude change your life?
I'm a believer. I've seen the practice of gratitude heal grief, relieve depression, speed physical healing and even set the scene for positive outcomes in business meetings.
In one organization I was part of, every administrative meeting started with each of us sharing one thing we were grateful for. Some gratitude was simple — maybe a beautiful sunrise. Other gratitude was more profound — somebody was changing their thinking on an important subject.
By the time we got to the business part of the meeting, we were all usually in good spirits and ready to tackle the tough issues of the moment.
Gratitude is getting a lot of attention these days. John Kralik's book, 365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life, has been the subject of stories by ABC, CBS, NPR, and Huffington Post, to name a few. Apparently he's on to something not only interesting, but powerful and transformative.
And he's not the only one:
• In November the New York Times told us that, "Cultivating an 'attitude of gratitude' has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners."
• Researchers at the University of California — Davis tell us that, "Scientists are latecomers to the concept of gratitude. Religions and philosophies have long embraced gratitude as an indispensable manifestation of virtue and an integral component of health, wholeness, and well being."
•Here's an excerpt from a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that integrative medicine leader Dr. Andrew Weil references:
"Participants who kept weekly gratitude journals exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the coming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events. The same researchers have reported that while grateful people don't deny or ignore the negative aspects of life, they tend to report positive emotions, life satisfaction and vitality as well as greater optimism and lower levels of depression and stress than people who are not grateful."
As we all look for affordable and effective ways to stay healthy and move forward in our lives, recognizing the transforming and healing power of gratitude seems like a winning strategy.
Bob Clark is a Christian Science practitioner from Belleair. Read his blog at flcompub.org/blog.
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