Gratitude as a Health Tool

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Gratitude can improve your life, and may even save it! No really. Dartmouth posted this web page on the importance of gratitude: http://www.umassd.edu/counseling/forparents/reccomendedreadings/theimportanceofgratitude/

Here’s a clip from that page:

"Researchers ... are turning their attention to the study of gratitude and its relationship to health and mental well-being. I will present some of their findings here to help us understand how gratitude is helpful and why it's important to our well-being.

People who keep gratitude journals on a weekly basis have been found to exercise more regularly, have fewer physical symptoms, feel better about their lives as a whole, and feel more optimistic about their upcoming week as compared to those who keep journals recording the stressors or neutral events of their lives.

Daily discussion of gratitude results in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness, energy, and sleep duration and quality. Grateful people also report lower levels of depression and stress, although they do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.

People who think about, talk about, or write about gratitude daily are more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or offered emotional support to another person.

Those with a disposition towards gratitude are found to place less importance on material goods, are less likely to judge their own or others success in terms of possessions accumulated, are less envious of wealthy people, and are more likely to share their possessions with others.

Emerging research suggests that daily gratitude practices may have some preventative benefits in warding of coronary artery disease."

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Grateful to have a fantastic tribe. 

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I don't think gratitude is meant to be "used" for anything but itself. True gratitude is a deep feeling I have in my body and mind for anything, from something tiny to something huge, anything at that moment I feel deeply fortunate to have.  Gratitude is more about experience than things for me now.  It took many years for me to experience true gratitude for life, people, perfect moments, beauty, my garden,  a really great book  --  not really about "stuff," or things I got. So yes, I am sure gratitude is good for us physically and mentally, because it brings us out of "mememe" and into caring abouat the rest of the world.

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Grateful for the great people met at the South Dakota Senior games! Awesome event; even better people!

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Grateful for firefighters.

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Grateful for a home gym.

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Grateful for planet earth; hoping we humans take better care of it.

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Grateful to have witnessed the lift-off of seven hot air balloons yesterday shortly after sunrise.  

 Not what we saw yesterday, but a fun timelapse of hot air balloons taking off at a NM festival:

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Grateful for difference. I wake up and check weather reports for all upcoming race locations, then swing by athlete sites to give kudos support to any friends who posted. DH wakes up and checks tech news and is over there talking enthusiastically to the video about the new Star Wars droid, BB-9E. Seriously cute, that man. Seriously different. You know, from me. 🙂 

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Grateful for justice. Thanks, you-know-who!

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I am grateful for senior games events and senior athletes. 

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Grateful for open doors ... even if it is only left open a crack ... LOL.

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Grateful for cycling friends.

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Grateful to know my place in the universe (and astronomy club nights out ... I see you Dumbell Nebula!).

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Grateful for the knowledge that persistence pays off.

Persistence speech from The Founder.

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Grateful DH let me sleep in today. 🙂

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@Epster wrote:

Gratitude can improve your life, and may even save it! No really. Dartmouth posted this web page on the importance of gratitude: http://www.umassd.edu/counseling/forparents/reccomendedreadings/theimportanceofgratitude/

Here’s a clip from that page:

"Researchers ... are turning their attention to the study of gratitude and its relationship to health and mental well-being. I will present some of their findings here to help us understand how gratitude is helpful and why it's important to our well-being.

People who keep gratitude journals on a weekly basis have been found to exercise more regularly, have fewer physical symptoms, feel better about their lives as a whole, and feel more optimistic about their upcoming week as compared to those who keep journals recording the stressors or neutral events of their lives.

Daily discussion of gratitude results in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness, energy, and sleep duration and quality. Grateful people also report lower levels of depression and stress, although they do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.

People who think about, talk about, or write about gratitude daily are more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or offered emotional support to another person.

Those with a disposition towards gratitude are found to place less importance on material goods, are less likely to judge their own or others success in terms of possessions accumulated, are less envious of wealthy people, and are more likely to share their possessions with others.

Emerging research suggests that daily gratitude practices may have some preventative benefits in warding of coronary artery disease."

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I'm grateful for faith that it will all work out.

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Woo hoo! Grateful for a brand new day!

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I'm grateful to be comfortable in my own skin.

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Grateful for last night's hard rain. wooo wheee but the hillside is loving it!

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Free irrigation does not irritate, instead it invites gratitude to trickle out.

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Grateful for super hard workouts and weight training sessions, and time to make tweaks before our next 3 races. Zoom, zoom! 🙂

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Grateful for a training route with a 6% hill and a race route with 2% hills. Rawr!

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Grateful that the 300ish calories in the small dipped ice cream cone I enjoyed today are no match for the nearly 9,000 calories I burned off this weekend. 

And that it was the one and only ice cream cone I consumed in the month of July. Huzzbah!

See ya never, ice cream calories!

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Grateful for progress on a number of fronts. Rah!

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Grateful to be awash in possibility.

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Grateful for others willing to work the seam of recumbent racing expansion. These people rock!

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Grateful for rabbits that lead to gold. (That's cycling-speak for: "Thanks everyone who ever rode the trail before me and made me a better cyclist; imma gonna chase that gold medal now.")

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Grateful for the Nebraska Senior Games that let four Coloradans make history this weekend.

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So grateful for this rain! After last night's fender bender* coming home from the Senior Games, we both need the relaxing sounds. Yes!!!

*No one was hurt, though the woman who hit us messed up her car when she ran into the recumbent rack on the back of our car. We're investigating possible stress fracture(s) to the recumbent trike rack and possible damage to one of the trikes, but hopefully will find nothing.

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Grateful for friends with whom to share good news.