The holidays are a time when people often practice gratitude. But it is also something that can be practiced any time of year.
Research shows that engaging in behaviors that help experience more gratitude is an effective way to experience more positive emotions and to cope with negative emotions and experience fewer negative emotions.
This clip reviews the benefits of practicing gratitude and discusses methods to experience more of it and more positive emotions. There is also a good research-based book on gratitude and it’s benefits on mental health and physical health. There is also a good workbook that has structured exercises to help experiences the benefits of gratitude in a short time.
Welcome back, I’m Dr. Matt B and welcome to your Emotional Minutes. It’s the holiday season in December of 2020 and it has me thinking a lot about the concept of gratitude.
The Benefits
Being thankful is something that a lot of people like to practice during the holidays. However, you can practice it any time of the year. There’s emerging research that’s finding that gratitude has a lot of benefits for mental health. This includes improving positive emotions and minimizing things like anxiety, stress, and feelings of depression.
There’s a couple tools or strategies used to increase levels of gratitude and decrease some negative emotional experiences.
Gratitude Journaling
One of the key tools people use is called gratitude journaling. This is basically journaling, logging, or writing down the things that you’re grateful for in your life. It can be very simple, small things, like a sunny day. Or maybe larger scale things in your life, like how a person has had a positive impact on your life. It may even be a specific event you were able to share with someone.
Researchers found that the best way to do this is to do it around one day a week. Take 15 or 20 minutes to sit down, think about five or six things you are grateful for in your life and write them down.
Gratitude Expression
Another tool is what we call gratitude expression, which is just like it sounds. It is finding ways to express your appreciation for some of the things that you have in your life. For example, write a letter to someone who has had an impact on you in your life. Another thing people like to do is to call or send a message to let someone know how they have impacted your life and how you appreciate that person.
Gift-Giving
Gift-giving is another way people show you are grateful. And it’s a great idea, even outside of the holidays when it’s not expected. Giving gifts to people is a way to show them that you appreciate them. And, interestingly enough, researchers found that gift-giving can increase our own positive emotions, in addition to lifting their moods.
Using All The Strategies
The strategies that we talked about are gratitude journaling, gratitude expression, and gift giving. These help boost positive emotions and decrease some of those more negative emotional experiences like stress, anxiety, or depression. You can also mix and match them to fit your needs. For example, do journaling once a week and send someone you care about a letter once a month.
If you are interested in more, there is a good research-based book on gratitude and it’s benefits on mental health and physical health. There is also a good workbook that has structured exercises to help experiences benefits of these strategies in a short time.
