What is Gratitude and Why is it Important?
“Gratitude is the most powerful correlate of happiness. When we’re feeling grateful, our body calms, and we feel at peace in all realms of our lives. It’s impossible to feel grateful and stressed at the same time.”
- Jason N. Linder, Psy.D., LMFT
What is Gratitude?
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, and confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Let’s start with a basic understanding of the concept of gratitude. According to Verywell Mind, a resource for reliable and up-to-date information on the mental health topics, gratitude is “a positive emotion that involves being thankful and appreciative and is associated with several mental and physical health benefits. When you experience gratitude, you feel grateful for something or someone in your life and respond with feelings of kindness, warmth, and other forms of generosity.”
While some people have dispositions that are naturally prone to feelings of being grateful, it is a trait that can be cultivated. It’s a tool to enhance one’s sense of well-being that is easy to learn and cultivate.
Gratitude plays a major role in the practice of mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he adapted the Buddhist teachings on mindfulness, provides meditations that focuses attention on people or things you are grateful for. His well-known loving-kindness meditation incorporates gratitude for the love of those in your life you are close to and focuses on self-love and kindness towards others to help you cope with the ups and downs of life.
Headspace, the guided meditation organization, teaches that “gratitude meditation is simply the practice of reflecting on the things in our lives we’re grateful for. It’s about experiencing that feeling of appreciation, whether for a loving family member or friend, a beautiful sunny day, or the pleasure of a good cup of coffee. It can be for things large or small, tangible or intangible — perhaps a successful recovery from an injury or illness, or a tough life lesson you weathered, where you came out the other side stronger and more confident.”
How is Gratitude Different From Thankfulness?
Thankfulness is an emotional response to a temporary circumstance. Gratitude includes being thankful, but goes beyond it – it is an attitude of appreciation under all circumstances. Gratitude is the expression of thankfulness and appreciation of life daily. It’s a state of being – even if you’re unhappy, you can still experience gratitude.
Whereas thankfulness is fleeting, gratitude provides a long-lasting feeling of satisfaction and improved well-being.
Why is Gratitude Important?
There is a connective between gratitude and better mental and physical health. Practicing gratitude can have a wide range of benefits. According to Verywell Mind, they include:
Better sleep
Better immunity
Higher self-esteem
Decreased stress
Lower blood pressure
Less anxiety and depression
Stronger relationships
Higher levels of optimism
And according to Jay Shetty in Think Like a Monk, gratitude has been linked to better mental health, self-awareness, better relationships, and a sense of fulfillment, leading to lower blood pressure, improved immune function, and lessen depression and anxiety. Gratitude plays a key role in being able to overcome a negative mindset.