Today is World Gratitude Day. We know we usually take the time in November to pause and be thankful for everyone and everything we have around us, but why not take a minute and look around you and do it today? Now that we’ve gotten back into the busyness of school and work schedules being back in full swing, it might be a good idea to be intentional about grateful anyway.
Here are five significant gifts gratitude gives us:
1) It makes us happier.
Simply journaling for just five minutes a day about what we are grateful for can increase our overall happiness by at least 10%.
2) It expands positive emotions and reduces the negative.
Grateful people experience a wider range of emotions and are better equipped to handle difficult experiences, making them less likely to feel jealousy or ill-will toward others.
Grateful individuals have a broader social network, more friends, and stronger relationships.
4) It reduces impatience.
People who appreciate what they have tend to make better economic decisions and feel less pressure to seek immediate gratification.
5) It reduces blood pressure.
If you want to lower your blood pressure, try counting your blessings daily. Take a look here to see what research out of UC Davis has to show. It will blow your mind. There’s way more to it than just lowering your blood pressure.
No doubt, we’ll revisit this again in November when it’s that time of the year to be thankful for a whole entire month, but why not use today as a warm-up? Take the time to look around and find 5 things/people/events/places/somethings that you are grateful for.
There are 10,000 beautiful things all around. Find five. Bonus points if you TELL the people in your life that you’re thankful for them.
… Which is why we’re saying: thank YOU! We are grateful for every one of you that reads our blog posts, listens to our shows, and helps others to find us. We are grateful for you.
Sources:
https://nationaldaycalendar.com/world-gratitude-day-september-21/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279403394_Gratitude_in_Practice_and_the_Practice_of_Gratitude
https://health.ucdavis.edu/medicalcenter/features/2015-2016/11/20151125_gratitude.html