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 for mild weather in which to tend to fall garden cleanup.

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@alsae546594 wrote:
Hi, I'm Josh, a machine operator. Been suffering from drowsiness from work for weeks now and I'm worried my work gets affected by this. So I just wanna ask some suggestions on what I can drink to fight sleepiness and to keep me active all day? Thanks a lot for your answers.

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Hi @alsae546594 Josh, You are asking the wrong person. I drink 4 cups of coffee and 10-18 cups of water a day, depending upon if I'm cycling or walking for my daily workout. No soda. No energy drinks. No alcohol. Just water. 

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Grateful for moderators. 🙂

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@bw95562019 wrote:

i'm grateful my son, daughter and grand daughter arrived home safe last night from their trip to florida

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Hurrah!

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Grateful to have a cycling crew that trains hard hoping to be able to bust records, personal and official. 

Nevertheless, I plan to leave the underwater cycling record (it's a real thing!) to the likes of these peeps:

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Well, I'm grateful that that's over! Wait, I'm doing it all again? Ugh. I mean, OK! In which case I am grateful for the will to train. ...

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I'm grateful to have just enough moxey (read: leg muscle) to keep training our steep hill route. (PS in answer to the question the guy in this video asks: it is the engine, not the vehicle, that climbs hills.)

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Grateful that today's 86F may be the hottest day left in the year.

I choose to believe that these guys knew of our late August forecast, and that their dancing is the result of that knowledge. 

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I'm also grateful for my morning walk.

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I'm grateful for opposing views. Sometimes they shore up my own beliefs, sometimes they show me another way of seeing things, but always they improve the view.

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Grateful for the road ahead.