What are the benefits of being thankful?
Grateful people report consistently higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality and optimism, and lower levels of depression and stress. By practising grateful thinking you can reduce your stress levels and take control of your happiness levels. When we integrate gratitude into daily life, it impacts on us in three ways: psychologically – as there will be a high activation of positive emotions, we will feel more alert, more active, more productive; physically – in a study, those who kept gratitude journals for three weeks felt better about their health, slept more and exercised on average an hour and a half more; and socially – as relationships become more satisfying, subjects feel closer and more connected to other people and subsequently less isolated and lonely. How does it work? Overall, the biggest predictor of our happiness is the quality of our relationships, and gratitude is a relationship-strengthening emotion. That’s the primary reason why it contributes t
