Life is busy – for all of us! Life can get so busy that we forget to smell the roses – literally and figuratively. While being active can be a good thing, being too busy is not.
When was the last time you intentionally took the time to take in the gifts that life has to offer and felt gratitude? Most of us don’t take the time we need to enjoy and appreciate life because of how crazy our schedules are, but we should!
Gratitude is an essential key ingredient to living a healthy, happy life. Below are five benefits of practicing gratitude:
Improved Mental/Emotional Health
The mind is a powerful thing and can change your life significantly! Daily groaning about what we don’t have, or wish we could change speedily results in developing depression and anxiety. When you practice daily gratitude, you lower your risk of prolonged depression and anxiety, or at best, it will be less severe.
Think about it – when you feed your mind unhealthy thoughts, it will create an unhealthy mind! But, what if you were to turn it around and replace the negative thoughts with positive thoughts? The same would happen – your mind will receive positive thoughts and will create a positive, healthy mind!
The Power Lies in You
YOU have the power to switch that mindset to be more positive than negative significantly! When you start to be thankful for what you have, you will begin to appreciate the good things in life, and you will derail your focus off the bad things in life. When you think positively, your mind follows suit, and your mind and body will work beautifully together to help you live your best life – so practicing gratitude is essential!
Remind yourself that a mind is a powerful thing, and it reacts to what we feed it!
Improved Physical Health
While feeding your brain with positive thoughts to aid it being healthier makes sense, practicing daily gratitude to improve our physical health isn’t a benefit most of us would consider. However, being aware of what you’re grateful for is exceptionally healthy for your physical well being as well!
In a 2015 Psychology Today article, Amy Morin wrote, “Grateful people experience fewer aches and pains, and they report feeling healthier than other people, according to a 2012 study published in Personality and Individual Differences.”
Here are different physical health side effects you can experience when you practice gratitude:
Improved Immune System
Practicing daily gratitude increases our immune systems; therefore, our bodies get sick less. When we think healthier, we become healthier!
Higher Pain Tolerance
When we add more positive thoughts to our brains, this often results in what’s called “analgesic effects,” which is something in our brains that mimic the relief we get from taking pain medication. When we experience this effect by practicing gratitude, we learn to be less sensitive to pain.
Improved, Natural Sleep
When your physical body is taken care of by practicing gratitude, you increase your chances of getting a great night’s sleep (which typically, most of us don’t understand!), which also carries a host of other health benefits!
Improved Empathy and Care for Others
When we wallow in our self-pity and focus on the things we suffer with or don’t have, we leave no time or room to focus on others and how they are feeling! When we take the time to practice showing thankfulness daily, we become aware of the beauty that life has to offer, and in doing so, we allow our head more room to care for other people.
Also, when we practice gratitude, we give ourselves the option to feel less revenge and aggression towards people who may have hurt us or are hurting us. Our focus becomes on what we’re thankful for, not what we want or think we need.
Improved Self-Esteem and Likeability
Focusing on what we are grateful for every day is a significant boost to our self-esteem! When we are aware of what we’re thankful for and appreciate what we have, we love ourselves more and aspire to be better than we have been! When you realize what you’re grateful for, even if it’s just about who you are, you give yourself grace and love in areas you never did before – and it shows to other people!
When your self-esteem increases, your likeability meter does so as well! People want to be that which they see, so if you show them something positive and healthy, they will want to be around you more! Now, I’m not saying that popularity and being accepted is the goal here. But it should be about loving and accepting yourself for you, first, but think of the people you can positively impact how you go through life – humble, confident and likable!
Increased Life Span
When we practice gratitude daily, intentionally, we reap all the benefits mentioned in this article, and more! In turn, all of these healthy, positive, life-changing benefits allow us to live our best life – LONGER! That’s right, practicing gratitude will enable you to live longer!
The less physically and emotionally sick we are, the better chance we have to survive this life a lot more! That’s quite an incredible, “life-changing” (pun intended) benefit! Knowing this benefit it helps us to see just how impactful and critical being grateful daily is!
Practice Gratitude Daily to Live and Love Your Best Life
We truly genuinely take practicing gratitude for granted in our busy lives, but when we are aware of the tremendous benefits being thankful has to offer, we can’t deny how crucial it is to include in our daily lives!
Do you want your chance at your best life? Less stress and depression, less self-hatred and alienation, and less pain? Of course, you do – we ALL do! Practicing gratitude daily can change all of that for you and can quite literally change your life for the better! Take time to smell the roses of life, intentionally!
Take the time each day to sit down and reflect on what you are grateful for, and write it down. Writing it down will have a bonus effect because it will be imprinted in your brain, allowing you to remember that which you’re grateful for often! Change your life by changing your mindset!
Share in the comments below: What is ONE reason why you want to practice daily gratitude?
PS – We’re participating in a #30daysofgratitude challenge for the month of November. Come join the fun by visiting our Facebook Page for daily gratitude prompts. Feel free to invite your friends too!