This Is Your Brain On Gratitude

Ahhh, November, aka, the "Gratitude Month."  If you are like me, your news feed on Facebook has now been infiltrated with post after post of what your friends are grateful for. While sometimes predictable and other times close to bragging, this is actually a terrific practice - one that should continue past November 30th.  Expressing gratitude is good for us on so many levels, so to help celebrate the "Gratitude Month" I've decided to share an excerpt from my new book "How To Live Your Happiest Life" (out soon!).  I hope you enjoy!

"Hopefully, we are all being grateful from time to time, but are you spending enough time being thankful for what you have or are you taking it all for granted? How much time do you spend dwelling on what's wrong about a situation instead of what's right about it? As Stephen Covey said in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, "The way we see the problem is the problem." Shift your perspective and look at things from a different point of view and you may just see more things to be grateful for. 

Interestingly, a "grateful" brain actually looks different when scanned than a brain focusing on negative things. When we're focused on negative things (i.e., why did this tree fall on my house!) we become clumsier and less likely to think of a solution to our problem. We process information slower and get confused more easily.

Practicing gratitude daily can give us a greater sense of well-being, make us more likely to help others, and help us make more progress toward our goals. In a study, doctors who regularly practiced gratitude were better at making a correct diagnosis. Grateful people also are (surprise!) happier, more satisfied with life, exercise more and feel physically healthier (probably due to all that exercise).

It wasn’t long ago that I conducted a short experiment entitled “100 Days of Thank You.”  (You can read the brief blog here:  www.100DaysofThankYou.blogspot.com ).  Much like volunteering, gratitude can (but doesn't have to) involve others. I found that as I verbalized my feelings of gratitude toward others, I was also getting that familiar 'ol warm-fuzzy feeling. Again, being kind to others = being kind to yourself. But fear not, introverts! You don't have to actually tell people you are grateful for them. Simply keeping a journal of what you are grateful for is a big step in the right direction."

Next week, I will continue with the gratitude theme and we'll look at what you should be grateful for (just in case you were running out of Facebook posts!).