10 Reasons for A 10 Week Gratitude Journey

Reach more goals: Participants who kept gratitude lists are more likely to make progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal, and health-based even weight loss) than those who did not.

Improved Health: The study also showed physical changes; the authors reported those keeping gratitude journals exercised more regularly and reported fewer physical and emotional symptoms.

Better Sleep=More Energy: The Study included a group of adults with neuromuscular disease who underwent a “gratitude intervention” for three weeks. Afterward, participants reported improvements in both how much and how well they slept.

Stronger Love Life: According to the study, feelings of indebtedness showed engagement and commitment externally yet gratitude had uniquely predictive power in relationship promotion, perhaps acting as a booster shot for the relationship.

Support Others: Participants in the daily gratitude condition were more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or having offered emotional support to another, relative to the hassles or social comparison condition.

Increase Influence: Gratitude generates social capital, in two studies with 243 total participants, those who were 10% more grateful than average had 17.5% more social capital and that number compounded by the level of increased gratitude.

Gratitude can lower your blood pressure: Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis and “the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude” says that people who keep gratitude journals “show a 10 percent drop in blood pressure compared to persons who are not keeping these journals.”

Gratitude Boosts our Mental Health: Researchers affirm that gratitude can also boost our mental health and well-being. They found that people who kept notes on what they’re thankful for have reported higher levels of positive emotions, more joy and pleasure, more happiness and optimism. They felt more alert, alive, and awake than others who did not practice gratitude. Notably, people who are focused on things they are thankful for are less depressed and less angry. In fact, researchers have found that gratitude can increase your “set point of happiness” by 25 percent.

Practicing gratitude can also enhance our relationships with other people. For example:

Gratitude can ward off envy: Robert Emmons points out, “You cannot feel envious and grateful at the same time. They’re incompatible feelings. If you’re grateful, you can’t resent someone for having something that you don’t.” His research has suggested that people who have high levels of gratitude have low levels of resentment and envy.

Gratitude can even help you attain your goals. Participants in a study who were asked to keep gratitude lists were more likely than those in control groups “to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal, and health-based) over a two-month period.”

A Simple Way to Tap Into Gratitude’s Benefits

How do you tap into some of these great benefits? It’s simple. At the end of the day, take a moment to write down what you’re grateful or thankful for. Write one phrase or sentence per each gratitude, up to five. That’s it! Participants in studies who have done this have reported significant benefits after just two weeks.

Join the 10-Week Gratitude Challenge

Are you willing to accept a little challenge? Let’s join together in keeping gratitude lists once a day for 10 weeks, and let’s see if we experience any of the benefits I’ve listed above. If we make our first gratitude lists today and then continue for 9 more weeks, we will complete the 10th entry on Tuesday August 6, 2013.

Let’s plan to touch base at that point and see if we are healthier and happier.