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Eight Ways Gratitude Boosts Happiness - Gratefulness.org

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Eight Ways Gratitude Boosts Happiness - Gratefulness.org

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Eight Ways Gratitude Boosts Happiness - Grateful.org

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Discover eight research-backed ways that practicing gratitude works to make you happier.

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What is Happiness? Learn About a Better Definition of Happiness You Can Use to Become Happier

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What is Happiness? Learn About a Better Definition of Happiness You Can Use to Become Happier

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How often have you said, "I just want to be happy"?

How often have you said to someone else, "I just want you to be happy"?

Have you ever stopped to consider exactly what happiness means? What, exactly, is this happiness you are wishing for?

It matters because it's hard for your wishes for happiness to come true if you aren't clear about exactly what happiness is.

What is Happiness? A Definition of Happiness

Possibly the best place to start defining happiness is by defining what it is not.

Many people believe that happiness is having fun at a party, the excitement of new experiences, the thrill and passion of sex, or the delights of a fine meal. These are all wonderful experiences to be cherished and cultivated but they are not happiness.

These experiences are the definition of pleasure. They are experiences to have and let pass. A meal to savor, then digest. A party to enjoy then let wind down. The passion to enjoy and the warm afterglow to linger in.

Pleasure is fleeting and must be if it is to continue to please us because if we have these joyful experiences all the time, our brains adapt and turn pleasure into routine. Once that happens, it takes even more to make us feel good again. Chasing pleasure is not happiness.

So, if happiness is not the same thing as pleasure, then what is happiness?

Happiness is...a warm puppy. Just kidding, warm puppies are pretty nice but I'm putting the puppy squarely in with pleasure. After all, would it still be fun to hold a warm puppy for a month? I don't think so. So, what is happiness?
Happiness is when your life fulfills your needs.
In other words, happiness comes when you feel satisfied and fulfilled. Happiness is a feeling of contentment, that life is just as it should be. Perfect happiness, enlightenment, comes when you have all of your needs satisfied.

While the perfect happiness of enlightenment may be hard to achieve, and even harder to maintain, happiness is not an either /or case. There are nearly limitless degrees of happiness between the bliss of enlightenment and the despair of depression. Most of us fall somewhere between, closer to the middle than the edges.

What Are Your Essential Needs to be Happy?

Since happiness is when your life fulfills your needs, the next logical question is, "What are my needs?"

Over the millennia many have offered answers to this question and nearly all came back with too simple answers to what is, at its core, a complex problem.

Let me ask you a question. Would you say that you, like all humans, are complicated to understand? Of course you are. We all are. If we weren't life might be much simpler but also much less rich. That complexity means that there are no simple, one-size-fits-all answers to what makes us happy.

Our individual needs vary based on our genetics, how we were raised, and our life experiences. That complex combination is what makes each of us unique, both in our exact needs, and in every other aspect of what makes us the person we are.

We may each be complex but we are all human and that provides the foundation on which we can discover our essential human needs. Just as we are all born looking human on the outside, we all share common basic needs on the inside. Where we differ is exactly how strongly we feel each of those needs.

I like to think of each of us like one of those big recording studio mixer boards, the ones with all the sliding controls and knobs, some of which interact with each other, some working separately, all working together to produce the final product. We're like that. Each knob and slide may be set a particular way, the way that produces the person we are. Each of us is like the same model of mixer board, let's call it Homo Sapiens 1. We each have the same knobs and sliders but we each have them set a bit differently.

Our current theory, largely based on new scientific discoveries about how the brain works and on current happiness theories, has identified 9 universal and overlapping human needs which go by the handy acronym WE PROMISE.

WE PROMISE stands for:

Wellbeing - mind-body connections, aspects of your physical body that affect your mood, and vice versa

Environment - external factors like safety, food availability, freedom, weather, beauty, and your home

Pleasure - temporary experiences such as joy, sex, love, and eating

Relationships - as a social species, relationships are at the foundation of what it means to be human

Outlook - how you approach the world through adventurousness, curiosity, and making plans

Meaning - having a purpose and the wisdom to understand it

Involvement - to be happy you have to be engaged and actively involved

Success - confirmation from yourself and others that what you do has value

Elasticity - how you recover from life's inevitable negative events

These 9 categories cover the range of human needs in a very general way and are intentionally overlapping, just as our thoughts and feelings overlap in our mind.

For example, the thrill of a roller-coaster ride is a mix of: fear (Elasticity), joy (Pleasure), adventure (Outlook), shared experience (Relationships), safety (Environment), upset tummies (Wellbeing), the courage to ride (Involvement), and the reward of having done it (Success). All these are experienced in one event, many at the same moment in time.

While the WE PROMISE categories are a convenient way to organize and simplify our universal needs, they are just the beginning - we are each more complex than that.

Within each category are 5 to 10 specific items which we call Happiness Essentials™, for a total (as of this writing) of 58 "knobs and sliders."

Going Deeper - How to Build a Happy Life

To go in-depth about WE PROMISE and your Happiness Essentials, I have created a special 14-part series, "The Keys to Happiness: Your Ultimate Guide to Building a Lifetime of Fulfillment and Satisfaction" which not only explains much more about the WE PROMISE categories and all of your Happiness Essentials, but shows you how to build a Happiness Plan, and even compute your Happiness Index to give you a measurement of your happiness which you can track over time.

To get "The Keys to Happiness" e-series, please click here now.

Wishing you happiness and fufillment,
Kenneth Benjamin and the Happiness International team

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What is Happiness? Learn About a Better Definition of Happiness You Can Use to Become Happier

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How often have you said, "I just want to be happy"? How often have you said to someone else, "I just want you to be happy"? Have you ever stopped to consider exactly what happiness means? What, exactly, is this happiness you are wishing for?

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Gratitude Practice Explained - Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence | Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

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Gratitude Practice Explained - Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence | Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

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Notes: Gratitude is a state of mind that comes out when you see a good thing in your life. It doesn't have to do with where your are in your life. It can be anything, whether a it be a face or tasty food.
You can practice gratitude by paying attention to all the good things in your life and writing them down in a journal too.

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How Gratitude Leads to a Happier Life | Psychology Today

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How Gratitude Leads to a Happier Life | Psychology Today

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Gratitude is an attitude and way of living that has been shown to have many benefits in terms of health, happiness, satisfaction with life, and the way we relate to others. It goes hand in hand with mindfulness in its focus on the present and appreciation for what we have now, rather than wanting more and more.

Feeling and expressing gratitude turns our mental focus to the positive, which compensates for our brain's natural tendency to focus on threats, worries, and negative aspects of life. As such, gratitude creates positive emotions, like joy, love, and contentment, which research shows can undo the grip of negative emotions like anxiety. Fostering gratitude can also broaden your mind and create positive cycles of thinking and behaving in healthy, positive ways.

Does Gratitude Improve Your Mood and Health?

The world's leading expert on gratitude is Dr. Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. In a 2003 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Dr. Emmons and his colleague Michael McCullough from the University of Miami examined the effects of writing gratitude diaries on almost 200 college undergraduates. Students were divided into three groups, and each group wrote 10 weekly diaries focusing on gratitude (blessings), hassles and annoyances, or neutral events. Those in the gratitude group were told:

"There are many things in our lives, both large and small, that we might be grateful about. Think back over the past week and write down... up to five things in your life that you are grateful or thankful for."

At the end of 10 weeks, those in the gratitude condition reported feeling more positive about their lives as a whole, more optimistic about the upcoming week, having fewer physical symptoms, and spending more time exercising. Yet the gratitude condition did not lead to a more positive affect, as the researchers had anticipated.

Perhaps focusing on gratitude only once a week was not frequent enough to change mood. Therefore, the researchers conducted a second study which increased the frequency of the diaries to once daily (for two weeks). They also replaced the neutral life events group with one in which participants wrote about the ways they were better off than other people (known as downward social comparison). These instructions were superficially similar to the gratitude instructions, but not likely to have the same benefits.

Results showed that, as the researchers had predicted, those in the gratitude condition experienced a more positive mood during the two-week period than those in the other groups, and they were also more likely to report doing acts of service, such as helping someone solve a problem or offering emotional support to others. Unlike in the first study, however, there were no benefits of gratitude on symptoms or health behaviors. The researchers concluded that maybe two weeks of gratitude was not enough time to create lasting benefits on health, so they decided to do a third study over a longer period, with a population that actually had more health problems.

The third study asked 65 adults with neuromuscular disease either to write gratitude diaries for a 21-day period or to just fill in the assessments of mood, well-being, and health without actually having an intervention (control condition). Those in the gratitude condition also had their partners rate their mood and life satisfaction.

Results showed that the gratitude group had more positive views of their life as a whole than control participants. They also reported a more positive mood and less negative mood on a daily basis during the study period. Their partners also reported that the gratitude participants had a more positive mood and greater satisfaction with life. With respect to health, the gratitude condition actually improved participants' sleep-both the amount and the quality. Perhaps focusing on life's blessings reduced the worry and angst that keep people awake at night.

In summary, writing gratitude diaries seems to be beneficial no matter what. Specific benefits of gratitude seem to depend on what you're comparing it to, whether you are healthy or sick, and how frequently and over what time period you do the practice. Just two or three weeks of filling out gratitude diaries each evening seems to improve mood, optimistic outlook, and life satisfaction, as well as making you more likely to help others. If you want to gain a health benefit from gratitude, you may need to persist with the diaries for two or three months. This practice takes only five or 10 minutes a day, but when done cumulatively, seems to reorient your mental compass towards focusing on the positive.

5 Ways You Can Be More Grateful
1. Think of a person who has helped you in life.
It may be a teacher, friend, parent, or mentor. Spend a few minutes reflecting on the ways they have helped you and the benefits you have gained as a result. Then, write them a heartfelt card, call, or visit them to tell them how their help has improved your life. If you are no longer in contact, write the card anyway and keep it to remind yourself to feel grateful.
2. Take a walk in nature or in your garden.
As you do so, think about all the ways that nature helps us to sustain life and feel happier and more comfortable. Focus on feeling grateful for the fresh air and water, the natural beauty of a flower, the peace that the ocean, lakes, or mountains give you, or the shade of a tree.
3. Think of somebody in your life who helps you on a daily or weekly basis: a partner, parent, best friend, beloved pet, boss, teacher, cleaner, or babysitter.
Spend a week observing and focusing on all the different ways in which they make your life happier or more comfortable. Make a plan to do something special for them to show your appreciation.
4. As you sit down to dinner at night, think about the people who helped this food get on your table.
This may include the farmer who grew the food, the workers who picked the crops, the drivers who transported it, the person who earned money to pay for the food, and so on.
5. Think about how you can live a life that conveys gratitude to the planet for all that we have.
Don't overuse water or electricity, recycle, buy sustainable products, donate to charity, volunteer to help the needy, work in an animal shelter, or clean up a natural area. Get involved in your community. Living responsibly and doing acts of service should help you feel good about your life and more aware of your connection to other living things.
Sign up for Dr. Greenberg's newsletter. Copyright Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D., 2015. All rights reserved.

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Gratitude has many benefits in terms of our health, happiness, satisfaction with life, and the way we relate to others. Learn research-based strategies to be more grateful.

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Scientists Discover One Of The Greatest Contributing Factors To Happiness — You'll Thank Me Later

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Scientists Discover One Of The Greatest Contributing Factors To Happiness — You'll Thank Me Later

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The TikTokers are at it again. This time, they're standing on one foot and trying not to fall over while they put on their socks and shoes. It might seem silly (and it definitely looks silly), but this latest social media challenge could actually reveal a lot about your health. Affectionately dubbed the 'Old Man Test' (or something the 'Old Person Test'), fitness trainer Chris Hinshaw initially developed the idea all the way back in 2021 as a way to test a person's balance, coordination, and biological age. It's been going viral ever since.

What is the 'Old Man Test'? How to try it at home

You've probably heard of similar challenges and tests like the famous sit-stand or sit-rise test, where you're challenged to sit down on the ground and stand back up again without using your hands and arms. Doing so successfully requires good balance, strength, stability, coordination, and even heart-health - making it a good indicator of how long you might expect to live.

There's also the bar-hang test, which posits that if you can dead hang from a pull-up bar for about 30-60 seconds, you're in good shape when it comes to how well you might age.
The Old Man Test is a lot like those, but some might say it's even more challenging. It consists of three-steps, which makes it unique:
Step One: Standing barefoot on one leg, reach down and grab your sock off the floor, then slide it onto the raised foot

Step Two: Still balancing on one foot, reach down and grab your shoe from the floor, and slide it on over the sock

Step Three: Still balancing, tie the shoe completely before lowering your foot back to the floor.

Now, if that wasn't hard enough, repeat for the other leg!

You can search TikTok or any social media for #oldmantest and see dozens of videos over the years of people attempting the challenge. You'll see men, women, young, and old alike doing it with varying levels of success. I even saw one challenge where the whole family, from pre-teen to grandma, all attempted the test at the same time!

Passing the test means your balance, core strength, flexibility, and coordination are looking good. Failing? Well...

Why balance says so much about your health

One of the key similarities between many of the viral "longevity tests" is how good your balance is. Good balance has been correlated with living a longer life again and again in scientific studies. Why is that always the common denominator, and why does it tell us so much about how long we might live?

First, there's the obvious. The older we get, the more likely we are to fall, and the more likely those falls are to seriously hurt us. Having great coordination and balance keeps us safe from those accidental spills.

But the importance of balance goes deeper. It's such a foundational component of our health because it helps us maintain good posture as we get older, keeps our legs and cores strong, and can even help with our cognitive function.
If you have trouble with the sit-rise test or the Old Man Test, don't worry - balance is something that can be trained and improved.
Regular exercise and mobility work can help, as can balance-specific training like working with balance balls or doing one-legged exercises. Even long walks have been shown to improve balance. It could also be related to an issue with vision, the inner ear, or brain function - which, again, is why testing your balance and coordination is such an excellent indicator of overall health.
Also, don't take any viral fitness challenge as gospel. Some people are naturally less mobile and flexible than others due to limitations in their joints and muscles, and their inability to complete these tests may have nothing to do at all with fitness levels or overall health. So no, you aren't doomed to die young if you can't tie your shoe while balancing on one foot.
That doesn't mean it's not fun to give it a try!

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Scientists Discover One Of The Greatest Contributing Factors To Happiness - You'll Thank Me Later

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Who would have thought that such a simple action can have such a profound effect on the level of happiness in our lives? Catch the setup in the first 30 seconds, the beauty of the experiment unfolding, the perfect moment at 4:25 that had me a bit choked up, and the best takeaway from it all at 6:25.

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Giving thanks can make you happier - Harvard Health

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Giving thanks can make you happier - Harvard Health

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In positive psychology reasearch, gratitude has been proven to improve happiness. Some ways to express gratitude are thinking of posotive memories and being thankful for things in your childhood or just past in general. Studies have also shown how expressing gratitude can improve relationships.

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Each holiday season comes with high expectations for a cozy and festive time of year. However, for many this time of year is tinged with sadness, anxiety, or depression. Certainly, major depression or a severe anxiety disorder benefits most from professional help. But what about those who just feel lost or overwhelmed or down at this time of year? Research (and common sense) suggests that one aspect of the Thanksgiving season can actually lift the spirits, and it's built right into the holiday - being grateful.

The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness (depending on the context). In some ways, gratitude encompasses all of these meanings. Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. In the process, people usually recognize that the source of that goodness lies at least partially outside themselves. As a result, being grateful also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals - whether to other people, nature, or a higher power.

In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

People feel and express gratitude in multiple ways. They can apply it to the past (retrieving positive memories and being thankful for elements of childhood or past blessings), the present (not taking good fortune for granted as it comes), and the future (maintaining a hopeful and optimistic attitude). Regardless of the inherent or current level of someone's gratitude, it's a quality that individuals can successfully cultivate further.

Research on gratitude

Two psychologists, Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami, have done much of the research on gratitude. In one study, they asked all participants to write a few sentences each week, focusing on particular topics.

One group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. A second group wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them, and the third wrote about events that had affected them (with no emphasis on them being positive or negative). After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation.

Another leading researcher in this field, Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, tested the impact of various positive psychology interventions on 411 people, each compared with a control assignment of writing about early memories. When their week's assignment was to write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for his or her kindness, participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores. This impact was greater than that from any other intervention, with benefits lasting for a month.

Of course, studies such as this one cannot prove cause and effect. But most of the studies published on this topic support an association between gratitude and an individual's well-being.

Other studies have looked at how being grateful can improve relationships. For example, a study of couples found that individuals who took time to express gratitude for their partner not only felt more positive toward the other person, but also felt more comfortable expressing concerns about their relationship.

Managers who remember to say "thank you" to people who work for them may find that those employees feel motivated to work harder. Researchers at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania randomly divided university fundraisers into two groups. One group made phone calls to solicit alumni donations in the same way they always had. The second group - assigned to work on a different day - received a pep talk from the director of annual giving, who told the fundraisers she was grateful for their efforts. During the following week, the university employees who heard her message of gratitude made 50% more fundraising calls than those who did not.

There are some notable exceptions to the generally positive results in research on gratitude. One study found that middle-aged divorced women who kept gratitude journals were no more satisfied with their lives than those who did not. Another study found that children and adolescents who wrote and delivered a thank-you letter to someone who had made a difference in their lives may have made the other person happier - but did not improve their own well-being. This finding suggests that gratitude is an attainment associated with emotional maturity.

Ways to cultivate gratitude

Gratitude is a way for people to appreciate what they have, instead of always reaching for something new in the hope it will make them happier, or thinking they can't feel satisfied until every physical and material need is met. Gratitude helps people refocus on what they have instead of what they lack. And, although it may feel contrived at first, this mental state grows stronger with use and practice.

Here are some ways to cultivate gratitude on a regular basis.

Write a thank-you note. You can make yourself happier and nurture your relationship with another person by writing a thank-you letter or email expressing your enjoyment and appreciation of that person's impact on your life. Send it, or better yet, deliver and read it in person if possible. Make a habit of sending at least one gratitude letter a month. Once in a while, write one to yourself.

Thank someone mentally. No time to write? It may help just to think about someone who has done something nice for you, and mentally thank the individual.

Keep a gratitude journal. Make it a habit to write down or share with a loved one thoughts about the gifts you've received each day.

Count your blessings. Pick a time every week to sit down and write about your blessings - reflecting on what went right or what you are grateful for. Sometimes it helps to pick a number - such as three to five things - that you will identify each week. As you write, be specific and think about the sensations you felt when something good happened to you.

Pray. People who are religious can use prayer to cultivate gratitude.

Meditate. Mindfulness meditation involves focusing on the present moment without judgment. Although people often focus on a word or phrase (such as "peace"), it is also possible to focus on what you're grateful for (the warmth of the sun, a pleasant sound, etc.).

Image: © PeopleImages/Getty Images

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Giving thanks can make you happier - Harvard Health