Gratitude

Nancy’s Gratitude List: my family, my work, little aspects that make life easier. Last, I am grateful for the benefits of gratitude. For a while now, I have had a hunch that gratitude works in our favor. The lesson of gratitude was brought home again when I spent the last few years of my mother’s life helping her out once a week. She was grateful for little things like being able to feed herself or being able to sew on a quilt. Her gratitude made the end of her life easier for others to help her. A range of caretakers rotated around mom and provided her with both soothing and sometimes painful help. No matter the outcome (pleasure or pain), my mom thanked them. All of the people that worked with mom said how much they loved her. Now you have to know that my mom would have preferred to take care of herself. She spent her life working hard. She rarely asked or needed help. However, she knew the power of gratitude.

You do not have to take my word for it. Research on gratitude or positive psychology supports my feelings about the importance of gratitude. Wood and colleagues (2010) summarize the benefits. Less anger, less depression, fewer feelings of vulnerability, increase in feelings of warmth, more outgoing, more active, more ideas, increase in trust of others, more willing to serve others, and more competent are just a few of the benefits of gratitude. You also have better interpersonal relationships and some research suggests better health.

Researcher Michael McCullough has made a career studying gratitude and the effects on human well-being. He also notes that gratitude has three purposes: serving as an emotional indicator of moral behavior, motivating pro-social interaction, and increasing the likelihood that benefactors will continue to help in the future. Grateful people do not feel insecure because they know that they are supported by those around them.

One of the best parts about the benefits of gratitude is that developing gratitude is not painful nor hard work. I don’t need to get myself to the gym on a cold winter morning or sweat in a sauna. McCullough ran a study where he asked people to record things they were grateful for every day into a journal. This had a profound impact on their measures of well-being in an incredibly short time. Seriously, write down what you are grateful for each day. Perhaps even thank others each day.

One way to make the list easier to create is to remember that nothing is guaranteed to you. We need to appreciate what we have while it is still here. It is useful then, to every once in a while think of how your life would be without the things you have, and in doing so become very grateful indeed.

In fact the way that researchers define gratitude can help you be more grateful. In a review of prior research, Wood and colleagues (2010) found the definition of gratitude includes aspects such as appreciating others, focusing on what one has, “feelings of awe when encountering beauty” (p. 891), identifying the good in right now, and understanding life is short. Not all of us experience gratitude the same way. However, we can learn from how others experience gratitude. For example, I am trying to stay “in the moment” more. I work hard to make the world I am in better. Sometimes, that focus puts me in the future rather than in gratitude for where I am right now.

I am grateful to those of you who took the time to read this article. Thank you for letting me share my thoughts on gratitude. Now I can add you to my gratitude list.

Emmons, 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.