Lift Yourself Up with Daily Gratitude

Written by Mary Welch Monday, December 21 2009

We all know that we should be grateful for what we have. We certainly know the fable about the person complaining about his shoes until he met a person with no feet. And, heaven knows, many of us ate our Brussels sprouts as children because kids in China didn’t have the good fortune of having Brussels sprouts on their plates.

While we know that intellectually, it is often hard to remember it and live our lives in a state of gratitude. And, that is unfortunate because being grateful for what we have helps a person, not only in his or her personal life, but in business as well. Catherine Ponder in her book, The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity, says that if a person holds a feeling of gratitude for as little as 15 seconds, physiologic changes take place in the body, such as more blood flow to the heart, more oxygen to the tissues, and reduced levels of stress hormones that create many metabolic changes.

Gratitude makes you healthier, smarter, and more energetic, found Robert A. Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. People practicing gratitude daily, for example, as in writing in a gratitude journal, reported higher levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness, and energy than those who didn’t.

Atlanta psychologist Mary Gresham says research on gratitude as part of the body of knowledge known as positive psychology has been under way for about 10 years.

“Gratitude can be developed with conscious intent and practice. Subjects who kept gratitude journals were more likely to feel optimistic about their lives, slept better, exercised more, and felt better than those who kept either neutral or negative journals,” she says.

“Developing gratitude has been shown to have many positive effects on well-being and happiness,” Gresham says. “An important part of being grateful is leaving behind attitudes of entitlement or victim hood. For many people, gratitude is a religious or spiritual practice but it is not necessary to be part of a spiritual group to reap the benefits of the practice of gratitude.”

“We must always remember how blessed we are, how incredibly blessed,” says Aruba Dowell, public relations manager for General Motors Corp. “I’m convinced when you don’t see the good, it goes bad. Things get out of control, and it’s hard to stop. I thank God every day, despite all the chaos and the crazy year.” Dowell takes that attitude both in her personal and professional life.