Let’s talk gratitude!
What is it? How does one practice it? Can it be beneficial for your health, or is gratitude really a matter of simply being thankful for everything you have?
Believe it or not practicing gratitude can have amazing benefits for your health, and I’m not just talking about the physical kind. This includes things such as improving various types of relationships, it can fight against depression, improve your decision making, improve performance, and can greatly improve your overall physical health.
It turns out that practicing gratitude is more than just a selfless way of thinking or living. It’s more of a practice that really promotes the act of being grateful, or thankful, for everything that you have. What’s even more interesting is that practicing gratitude transforms us from the inside out.
So, while we are improving things on the outside, such as the way we interact with the world, we’re also improving things on the inside, such as our immune system.
Crazy, right?
I guess to sum this all up in a nutshell, what gratitude does for our health is make room for more positivity in our lives, which naturally allows for more positive actions and results to take place, which naturally makes us happier and more successful people.
Sounds a bit too good to be true, right? I mean after all improving your health, caring for your body, it’s not that easy! Or is it?
Related Posts: The Fastest Way to Improve Your Health at Home
Related Posts: 5 Ways to Improve Your Health
Why practicing gratitude is important
First things first, let’s define gratitude. The online dictionary defines gratitude as “the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness”.
So pretty much gratitude is an expression of appreciation for what you have. Still wondering why is practicing gratitude so important?
Honestly there are probably a million reasons why practicing gratitude is important, but out of those million reasons I think the one that matters most is the fact that it really does show your appreciation for the little things in life.
Often times we strive to have it all, but what does that really look like? This depends on the person and their overall outlook on life, but I think we can all agree that to have it all really means to have everything you ever wanted. That’s not what gratitude is about nor is it what it strives for.
Gratitude is about accepting all that you have, even if it’s not everything you wanted, for the simple fact that you are aware that you could very well not have it at all. It’s recognizing that positivity invites positivity and all of that can lead to an abundance of happiness and success in your life.
The key to practicing gratitude is expressing appreciation for what you have. This may be something as simple as being in good health, or being able to walk yourself to the bathroom every morning. Showing gratitude for little things such as these will naturally start the process of transforming yourself from the inside out.
Now practicing gratitude isn’t some secret ingredient to improving your health. It’s just yet another natural (and free) way of taking control of your life which just so happens to have amazing benefits for your health.
And all of these benefits are really small, but significant, changes in your health. This includes things such as not being sick as often, your digestive system may improve greatly, you’re a much happier person, or you’re able to lose and maintain weight loss.
All this and much more can come from the simple act of practicing gratitude.
How can practicing gratitude improve my health
As mentioned earlier there are many ways practicing gratitude can improve your health.
Some of those ways include improving your relationships, fighting against depression, improving your decision making, seeing changes in your overall performance, and even your overall physical heath.
As you can see gratitude is not only good for your physical health, but your emotional and mental health as well.
Let’s look at these different areas of health a little deeper so that you can get a better understanding of how practicing gratitude can improve these areas for you.
- Improving relationships
We all have relationships that are meaningful to us, such as the ones we may have with our families. Practicing gratitude can improve these relationships greatly by improving the way you communicate with others.
For example, if you have a health goal to go vegan, practicing gratitude can you do the following things:
- find better ways to communicate this goal with your family
- grant you the patience to ease yourself into this new lifestyle
- help you build a support group that is going to support you on this journey
While this may not seem like a big deal the reality is that it is. Often times when we create new goals that are centered around our health, they hold a personal meaning to us that others may not understand.
Gratitude can improve the way you communicate things, such as personal health goals, to those who are most important in your life. This not only allows for the opportunity for others to unconditionally support you in your goal, but also the opportunity for you to actually commit to this goal so that you can improve your health in whatever way you believe is right.
- Fighting against depression
Gratitude can even be helpful in fighting against depression. How? Turns out that gratitude is a natural antidepressant and can even improve your overall quality of life.
A big part of depression is having a very low quality of life, even if you are living the best life anyone could ever imagine. This is because depression is a very personal emotion that looks different on everyone, and the root cause of depression various from person to person.
Therefore, it can be hard to identify depression, and when not identified, nearly impossible to treat. This is where practicing gratitude for your emotional health can change the game.
Practicing gratitude consistently can decrease levels of depression and improve one’s quality of life. This is because you are training your brain to focus more on the positive things happening in your life, and the things you are in control of.
This takes the focus off of the things in your life that you lack control over, or the things you wish you had more of.
With gratitude you learn how to find appreciation for the things that help make your life what it is. Gratitude can also help you in find that internal motivation to continue to improve your life so that you personally find it to be all the more enjoyable on a daily basis.
Related Posts: How to Increase Your Happiness for Success
Related Posts: Wellness Practices That Will Significantly Increase Your Happiness
- Improving decision making
Decision making plays such a huge role in our lives. It matters for our career, our families, and our own personal lives.
Practicing gratitude can help you be confident with the decisions you make for your life. Often times we go back and forth with ourselves about what the “right” decision to make for a specific situation may be.
For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds by the end of the month, and you’ve been eating clean for the past 3 weeks, you may find yourself debating about whether or not you deserve a cheat day.
Even more so you may debate with yourself about what is considered an appropriate meal for cheat day. Cheeseburger and fries or an extra serving of ice cream for dessert?
Gratitude can help you feel confident in making decisions about your health such as this. And honestly in making decisions about your life in general.
Only you can truly know what you need to do to improve the areas of your health that you are not comfortable or satisfied with. This includes making decisions that are going to make you happy and have no regrets about it in the end.
Gratitude is like the key to the door of decision making. Once you become accustomed to practicing it consistently, no one else’s opinions or judgements about what is “best” for your health matters, because the loudest voice you learn to hear is your own.
- Performance
Something practicing gratitude can really do for your health is improve your overall performance. Oddly enough gratitude really does help with increasing internal motivation which naturally increases your confidence level.
Practicing gratitude can help you find the motivation to complete tasks that are specifically tailored to your health.
For example, choosing to exercise every day for the simple fact of wanting to take care of your body. This has to be an internal motivator otherwise it won’t work.
Practicing gratitude can be that silent reminder to be thankful for the little things in life, such as having a body that allows you to be able to move in any way you want it to.
That internal motivation can help to improve your overall performance level. How? Well you might set a specific goal to achieve, and once you achieved that goal you may challenge yourself a little bit more, as a means to push yourself a little bit further.
For example, exercising for 15 minutes day for a week straight may motivate you to start exercising for 30 minutes, simply because you know your body can handle it.
Gratitude expresses your appreciation for what your body is able to do, coupled with the desire to challenge yourself just a little bit more, to push past your limits with every little improvement.
- Physical health
Practicing gratitude improves your physical health in regards to you simply wanting to not take for granted all the things that your body can do.
This includes things such as exercising, walking for long distances, practicing yoga, and even being able to get yourself around the house. Physical health is not all about exercise. It’s about the movement that you are able to do with your body on a daily basis.
For example, gratitude can be a reminder to not just sit around the house on the couch all day being a lazy couch potato. Instead, it can motivate you, and remind you, to move your body by doing something as simple as cleaning the living room while watching TV.
There are literally a ton of things that our bodies are able to do for us, and most days we don’t show that appreciation to our bodies. Practicing gratitude can help to remove those blinders and allow you to be able not take for granted the mobility that your body allows you to do.
The more you move the healthier and stronger your body will be, which of course will all have a ripple effect on your overall health.
Related Posts: How to Reduce Stress in Your Everyday Life
Related Posts: 5 Ways A Wellness Routine Can Improve Your Life
How to practice gratitude
By now I bet you’re wondering how to practice gratitude. There are a couple of ways you can go about doing this. I’ll share with you my two favorite ways.
The first is by simply meditating. I know this can be hard for most people simply because it really does require you to sit with your thoughts and emotions, filtering out all the background noise, and really tuning into yourself.
When meditating I like to take a couple of seconds before diving deep by saying out loud the things that I am grateful for in my life. Usually this is whatever comes to mind first. Then I enter my meditation process, and at the end of it I like to take another couple of seconds repeating things that I am grateful for.
Doing it in this routine I have come to find that it makes my mediation process more enjoyable because I am able to really focus on myself. By stating what I’m grateful for beforehand I am able to transfer that energy and focus on how I’m feeling. Stating what I’m grateful for afterwards allows me to be able to have goals to set and look forward to achieving for the day.
Another thing I like to do is simply live in the present moment. This means that I’m not anticipating things that have yet to come or happen, and I’m not living in the past. Instead, I’m focusing on everything that is happening in the present moment, and doing my best to express the appreciation that I have for where I am currently on my life journey.
This can be harder because being present is not something we are physically disciplined to know how to do. It’s more of a practice that you have to continue to practice in order to really become disciplined with living in the present moment.
Something I have found that makes this easier is meditating on a daily basis. Turns out in the end it all comes full circle.
Here are some other ways that you can practice gratitude:
- Keep a gratitude journal
- Smile often
- Spend quality time with those you love
- Practice the art of not complaining about anything
- Go out of your way to do something nice for others
- Say thank you often
- Screen shot and share quotes and images that inspire and represent gratefulness and positivity
- Embrace challenges and turn them into opportunities/See the growth opportunity in your mistakes
Do you practice gratitude? If so, how has it improve your health? Let’s talk about it!
-Xo
Kimora