Happy New Year. 👏🏾👏🏾This is Dr. Barbara Entsuah and I am excited to be back with Health News. I will start this year with an article on benefits of expressing GRATITUDE. Just like how “our words frame our world”, our attitude also affects our physical, mental and spiritual health. There is an expression “Your attitude and aptitude, will determine your altitude”. So, let’s find out the research on Gratitude and how it affects us.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, gratitude is the state of being grateful, and thankfulness. It comes from the Latin word gratus ‘pleasing, thankful’. Robert Emmons, a leading researcher of gratitude, defines gratitude “as a recognition of the gifts that others give us, a recognition of the source of those gifts, and an appreciation of those gifts”.
Sometimes we forget to be grateful for our lives and things in our lives, not appreciating how blessed we are compared to others. Over the last few years, research has shown that there are benefits for being grateful or appreciative for the small and big things in one’s life.
There are people who are “gratitude bloggers” and there are gratitude journals or notebooks used for journaling. Some people may journal once daily, once a week or once a month.
Some studies have shown that the benefits include:
- Decreased materialism
- People are more generous
- Better sleep
- Improvement in interpersonal relationship
- Lowered stress (NPR Health News, Dec. 24th, 2018).
Other research studies have shown that for those with mental health issues, practising gratitude by writing about gratitude resulted in:
- Improved mental health
- Changes in the brain giving a distinct brain activity
- Participants became more attentive to how they expressed gratitude (Wong, J, Brown, J.; June 6, 2017 How Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item).
The Bible, a book dear to me, teaches a lot about being grateful and expressing gratitude. Jesus after healing ten lepers, found that only one came back to give thanks “And fell down on his face at his feet, giving thanks……And Jesus answering said, “were there not ten cleansed?…arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole” Luke 17:16-19. I believe the wholeness here was more than physical healing- it was body, soul and spirit.
So this year:
1) Recognize the Gifts others give you.
2) Recognize “Gifters” (givers of gifts) in your life.
3)Appreciate the many gifts in your life.
4) Be a “Gifter” to someone else.
Start 2021 by improving the art of being Grateful and Thankful, because Gratitude “turns what we have into enough”.
Remember to SHARE this with others if you have been blessed by this.
Until next time stay Blessed and be Grateful 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
