5 Reasons To Practice Gratitude Beyond Thanksgiving
Growing up, part of our family’s Thanksgiving tradition was to go around the table and say one thing we were grateful for.
Now, gratitude gets more conversation than just one day a year – and for good reason. Gratitude and its effects on physical health, mental health, relationships, and happiness are being studied and researched.
“Gratitude is good medicine,” says Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis and author of The Little Book of Gratitude. “Clinical trials indicate that the practice of gratitude can have dramatic and lasting effects in a person’s life. It can lower blood pressure and improve immune function. ... Grateful people engage in more exercise, have better dietary behaviors, are less likely to smoke and abuse alcohol and have higher rates of medication adherence.”
But what is gratitude exactly? Harvard Health has a great explanation: “Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. In the process, people usually recognize that the source of that goodness lies at least partially outside themselves. As a result, being grateful also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals – whether to other people, nature, or a higher power.”