Gratitude is “the practice of making space for appreciation,” licensed psychologist Snehal Kumar, Ph.D., tells mbg. This could be an appreciation for the people and things in your life, the experiences you’ve had, or the experiences you’ve yet to have, but gratitude can also (and should) be rooted in an appreciation of the self, Kumar explains. So what happens when you do something about it? Here’s a list of all the various benefits of practicing and expressing gratitude on a regular basis, according to the experts and scientific research: These findings suggest that when you’re in the thick of a stressful situation, if you are able to refocus your attention and energy on things that you are grateful for in the moment, you can calm both the mind and body, therefore reducing the physical and mental symptoms of stress. What that means practically? “A grateful mind will allow you to be less stressed and feel more positive emotions,” Jackson explains. “Research suggests thinking of things you are grateful for has a positive impact on how you feel and behave.” “[When] you are triggered, overwhelmed, anxious, sad, angry, depressed, etc., the amygdala (the emotional alarm in the center of the brain) gets triggered, which shuts down executive functioning,” where logic, reason, rationality, communication, and decision-making reside, Rose explains. If you choose gratitude over a grudge and over the negative, it won’t necessarily negate the issue entirely; however, it will help you feel less emotionally charged. In other words, gratitude helps to “calm the emotional brain” because it gives you the ability to analyze and respond rather than give in to your initial reaction to what is arising. “[In addition to an] increase in feeling loved and cared for, as well as love and caring for others, [practicing gratitude] will also help you to increase the feeling of interconnectivity with others,” Rose explains. By allowing you to tap into a greater human experience, ultimately overlapping with the practice of self-compassion, gratitude serves as a gentle reminder that you are not alone; your problems and insecurities are valid and shared, and recognizing this can help strengthen your social connections. To her point, a series of five 2012 studies2 published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science found gratitude enhances empathy, and in turn, reduces aggression. Per the study’s results, this is because empathy is the ability to be sensitive toward and understand people’s intentions and emotions. When individuals are empathetic, they are less likely to be confrontational and more likely to behave in a prosocial manner. Look at it this way: The more you express feelings of gratitude, the easier it is to put other people’s actions into perspective and to interpret how and why they feel or respond to circumstances in specific ways. In turn, some research suggests that honing a more grateful mentality now might even help prevent disease later on in life. One 2015 study found gratitude can lead to a better mood, better quality of sleep, more self-efficacy as it relates to heart health, and even lower amounts of inflammation in the body. Another study4 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) analyzed blood flow across various regions of the brain while participants expressed feelings of gratitude and found that individuals who showed more gratitude experienced higher levels of activity in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that controls major bodily functions such as eating, drinking, sleeping, your metabolism, and stress responses. “From this evidence on brain activity, it starts to become clear how improvements in gratitude could have such wide-ranging effects from increased exercise and improved sleep to decreased depression and fewer aches and pains,” neuroscientist Alex Korb, Ph.D., writes in Psychology Today. “Allow children to witness you modeling being helpful and kind to others in small or big ways” so that they can ultimately mimic your behavior, Vasa says. “Noticing and participating in acts of kindness as a family allows for more connection and positive experiences, which we can all be grateful for.” Gratitude in young people has also been found to be correlated with less envy of others6. Finding each and every opportunity to exercise gratitude—and seizing them—is to condition the mind to “discover more things to appreciate and create new, positive mental habits and even neural pathways in the brain,” the Rev. Connie L. Habash, LFMT, tells mbg. In doing so, gratitude can help you view the world with a glass-half-full approach, shifting your perspective from a deficit mindset to one of abundance. “Gratitude is the way by which we remind ourselves that not everything is bad and that there are blessings we can focus on,” Sanam Hafeez, M.D., a neuropsychologist in New York City and Columbia University faculty member, tells mbg. As a result, gratitude can cause a “ripple effect” in which counting your blessings makes you feel more motivated, “and by feeling more motivated, you are continuing to work toward a dream job, a fitness goal, or an improved relationship,” Hafeez explains. That ongoing motivation and sense of hope can be a key factor when it comes to protecting yourself against depression and other mental health difficulties. “It is commonly noted that the better a person feels, the more likely they are to express happiness to others,” and the less likely they are to “compare themselves to others and feel resentful or negative,” Sommerfeldt says. In a series of three studies10 published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers randomly assigned participants to either keep a daily or weekly log of one of three topics: hassles they encountered, things they were grateful for, or neutral life events and relationships. Participants were encouraged to document their overall mood, physical and mental health symptoms, and their behaviors along the way as well. The results showed that participants required to engage in a gratitude practice were relatively more positive and experienced more emotional and interpersonal benefits than participants who focused on other topics. “It is easy for us to focus on what’s going wrong in our lives rather than on the things that are going right,” licensed clinical psychologist Roxy Zarrabi, Psy.D., tells mbg. Practicing gratitude regularly can counteract this by increasing your appreciation for what you have, which, Zarrabi states, ultimately “contributes to psychological, physical, and social benefits.” “[Gratitude] puts us into communication and communion with the world around us (often as represented by other people),” Borg says. “[It] can lead to a cycle of giving and receiving that becomes reciprocal and can lead to a state of feeling and being in mutuality with the world.” “It’s a great reminder to say to yourself, ‘I’m already getting through this…and I’m breathing,’” she says. “As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, and you will get through whatever challenge is arising.” In one study13 published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, researchers analyzed people’s brain activity through an MRI scanner as they watched money being transferred into either their own account (designed to spur feelings of gratitude) or the account of a local food bank (designed to spur feelings of altruism). Both feelings lit up the same region of the brain—the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that processes risk and reward—showing that the feelings of gratitude and giving are closely related. Then the researchers had people pick up gratitude journaling. In a fascinating turn of events, after three weeks of the writing practice, people’s brains began responding differently to feelings of gratitude and altruism: That same ventromedial prefrontal cortex started lighting up even more in response to giving than it used to before starting the gratitude journaling. “Could practice change how emotions that support social relationships—such as gratitude, empathy, and altruism—are typically programmed into the brain? Through practicing gratitude, could people become more generous?” Christina Karns, Ph.D., the neuroscientist behind the study, wrote in a Washington Post essay exploring her findings. “Practicing gratitude shifted the value of giving in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. It changed the exchange rate in the brain. Giving to charity became more valuable than receiving money yourself.” The study divided some 300 participants into three groups: The first group was asked to write a letter of gratitude to another person for three weeks, the second was asked to write about their feelings about negative experiences, and the third was not assigned a writing prompt. The results showed that individuals who wrote letters of gratitude reported “significantly” better mental health after their writing exercise ended—but that wasn’t even the most fascinating finding. More than two months later, the researchers used an fMRI scan to analyze everyone’s brain activity while they received money from a kind stranger (designed to inspire feelings of gratitude). The people who had written the gratitude letters showed a lot more activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain associated with learning and decision-making, than those who hadn’t done a writing exercise. That suggests a three-week gratitude practice was still affecting people’s brains nearly three months after they’d started it. “This indicates that simply expressing gratitude may have lasting effects on the brain,” wrote Joel Wong, Ph.D., and Joshua Brown, Ph.D., two psychologists who were part of the research team behind the study, in Greater Good Magazine. “Practicing gratitude may help train the brain to be more sensitive to the experience of gratitude down the line.” So there you have it: Making space for appreciation can positively affect your life physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, and those effects might just add up over time. If you’re ready to get started, here are a few questions to help spark gratitude and some simple ways to bring more gratitude into your life.
