THE GRATITUDE BOOK Benefits

A gift for you to enjoy in this upcoming holiday season.

GRAND DON’S THANKSGIVING GIFT The Benefits of Gratitude

This Gratitude Book is a compendium of songs and sayings and just why being grateful is so important.

THE 28 BENEFITS OF GRATITUDE Happier Human (Amin, 2014)

5 Groups of Benefits: 1. Emotional Benefits 2. Social Benefits 3. Personality Benefits

4. Career Benefits 5. Health Benefits

*1. www.happierhuman.com

Gratitude and Emotional Benefits

Practicing gratitude is known to impact our emotions and emotional health. Evidence that a regular “Attitude of Gratitude” can: 1) Make us happier–simply journaling for 5 minutes a day about what we are grateful for can enhance our long-term happiness by 10% (*2. Emmones & McCullough, 2003; *3. Seligman, Stern, Park & Peterson, 2005)

1) Increase psychological well-being–we can reap the best benefits of gratitude by embodying gratitude and truly living a life of gratitude–a state we can get to by regular practice and commitment. 2) Enhance our positive emotions–research has shown that gratitude reduces envy, facilitates positive emotions and makes us more resilient (*4. Amin, 2014). 3) Increase our self esteem–gratitude can help you feel better about your circumstances, which can lead to feeling better about yourself. 4) Keep suicidal thoughts and attempts at bay–a study on the effects of gratitude on depression, coping and suicide showed that gratitude is a protective factor when it comes to suicide ideation in stressed and depressed individuals (*5. Krysinska, Lester, Lyke and Corveleyn, 2015).

Gratitude and Social Benefits “Happy and fun people are fun to be around.” Gratitude can:

5) Make people like us. 6) Improve our romantic relationships–showing our gratitude to loved ones is a great way to make them feel good, make us feel good, and make the relationship better in general. 7) Improve our friendships–those who communicate their gratitude to their friends are more likely to work through problems and concerns with their friends and have a more positive perception of their friends (*6. Lambert & Fincham, 2011). 8) Increase social support–gratitude not only helps you get the social support you need to get through difficult times, but it lessens the need for social support in the first place (*7. Wood, Maithy, Gillette, Linley & Joseph). 9) Strengthen family relationships in times of stress–gratitude has been found to protect children from anxiety and depression acting as a buffer against the internalization of symptoms (*8. Stoeckel, Wessbrod, & Ahrens, 2015). Gratitude and Personality Benefits Aside from the social and emotional benefits gratitude can provide, the regular practice and general “Attitude of Gratitude” can even affect your personality. Gratitude can: 10) Make us more optimistic–regular gratitude journaling has been shown to result in 5%-15% increases in optimism (*9. Amin, 2014) meaning that the more we think about what we are grateful for, the more we find to be grateful for. 11) Increase our spiritualism–the more spiritual you are, the more likely you are to be grateful and vice versa (*10. Urgesi, Aglioti, Skrap, & Fabbro, 2010). 12) Make us more giving–evidence has shown that promoting gratitude in participants makes them more likely to share with others, even at the expense of themselves , and even if the receiver was a stranger (*11. Urgesi, Aglioti, Skrap, & Fabbro, 2010). 13) Indicate reduced materialism–those who are grateful and less materialistic enjoy greater life satisfaction (*12. Tsang, Carpenter, Roberts, Frisch, & Carlisle, 2014). 14) Enhance optimism–a study on the effects of gratitude on positive affectivity and optimism found that a gratitude intervention resulted in greater tendencies toward positivity and an

1) expanded capacity for happiness and optimism (*13. Lashini, Shaeiri, Asghan-Moghadam, & Golzari, 2012).

Gratitude and Career Benefits In the workplace gratitude can:

2) Make us more effective managers–research has shown that practicing gratitude enhances your managerial skills, enhancing your praise-giving and motivational abilities as a mentor and guide to the employees that you manage (*14. Stone, etal., 1983). 3) Reduce impatience and improve decision making–as anyone who has ever worked in a stressful job already knows, decisions made to satisfy short term urges rarely provide positive work results or a boost to your career. 4) Help us find meaning in our work–gratitude is one factor that could help people find meaning in their job, along with applying their strengths, positive emotions and flow, hope, and finding a “calling”(*15. Dik, Duffy, Allan, O’Donnell, Shin, and Steger, 2015). 5) Contribute to reduced turnover–research has found that gratitude and respect can help employees feel embedded in their organization or welcomed and valued (*16. NG, 2016). 6) Improve work-related mental health and reduce stress.

Gratitude and Physical Health Gratitude can:

7) Reduce depressive symptoms 8) Reduce your blood pressure 9) Improve your sleep 10) Increase your frequency of exercise 11) Improve your overall physical health–apparently, grateful people are healthy people.

Gratitude Role in Recovery Gratitude may:

12) Help people recover from substance misuse 13) Enhance recovery from coronary health events 14) Facilitate the recovery of people with depression

RESOURCES

1.

https://www.happierhuman.com/benefits-of-gratitude/

2. Emmonse, R. A., & Mccullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 84 (2), 377-389. 3. Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions. American Psychologist, 60 (5), 410–421.

1. Amin, A. (2014). The 31 benefits of gratitude you didn’t know about: How gratitude can change your life. Happier Human . 2. Krysinska, K., Lester, D., Lyke, J. and Corveleyn, J., 2015. Trait gratitude and suicidal ideation and behavior. Crisis . 3. Lambert, N. M., & Fincham, F. D. (2011). Expressing gratitude to a partner leads to more relationship maintenance behavior. Emotion , 11 (1), 52. 4. Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Gillett, R., Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2008). The role of gratitude in the development of social support, stress, and depression: Two longitudinal studies. Journal of Research in personality , 42 (4), 854-871. 5. Stoeckel, M., Weissbrod, C., & Ahrens, A. (2015). The adolescent response to parental illness: The influence of dispositional gratitude. Journal of Child and Family Studies , 24 (5), 1501-1509. 6. Amin, A. (2014). The 31 benefits of gratitude you didn’t know about: How gratitude can change your life. Happier Human . 7. Urgesi, C., Aglioti, S. M., Skrap, M., & Fabbro, F. (2010). The spiritual brain: selective cortical lesions modulate human self-transcendence. Neuron , 65 (3), 309-319. 8. Urgesi, C., Aglioti, S. M., Skrap, M., & Fabbro, F. (2010). The spiritual brain: selective cortical lesions modulate human self-transcendence. Neuron , 65 (3), 309-319. 9. Tsang, J. A., Carpenter, T. P., Roberts, J. A., Frisch, M. B., & Carlisle, R. D. (2014). Why are materialists less happy? The role of gratitude and need satisfaction in the relationship between materialism and life satisfaction. Personality and individual differences , 64 , 62-66. 10. Lashani, Z., Moghaddam, M., & Shaeiri, M. (2012). Effect of gratitude strategies on positive affectivity, happiness and optimism. رواﻧﭘزﺷﮑﻲ و رواﻧﺷﻧﺎﺳﻲ ﺑﺎﻟﯾﻧﻲ اﯾران = Iranian Journal of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology-(2) , .اﻧدﯾﺷﮫ و 11. Stone, E. F., Gueutal, H. G., Gardner, D. G., & McClure, S. (1983). A field experiment comparing information-privacy values, beliefs, and attitudes across several types of organizations. Journal of applied psychology , 68 (3), 459. 12. Dik, B. J., Duffy, R. D., Allan, B. A., O’Donnell, M. B., Shim, Y., & Steger, M. F. (2015). Purpose and meaning in career development applications. The Counseling Psychologist , 43 (4), 558-585. 13. Ng, T. W. (2016). Embedding employees early on: The importance of workplace respect. Personnel Psychology , 69 (3), 599-633.

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