Gratitude is a powerful emotion associate with a myrad mental and physical benefits. The benefits of gratitude are endless, but here are 7 key benefits that will unlock the smile on your face and bring a peace that's goes beyond our mere understanding.

Gratitude Works

Gratitude works because it allows us to celebrate the present and be active partakers in other people's lives. By valuing and appreciating friends, ourselves, situations and circumstances,our mind focuses on what we already have rather than something that we want or think we need.

Here are seven key benefits of gratitude:

1. Improves Mental Health

Being thankful has been linked to enhanced mental health and emotional well-being. Studies have shown that feeling thankful can reduce depression, anxiety, stress, difficulties with chronic pain and risk of disease. It promotes positive emotions, cultivates resilience, and helps you maintain a more optimistic outlook on life.

2. Enhances Relationships

Gratitude strengthens and deepens interpersonal relationships. When you express gratitude towards others, it helps you create a stronger bond and strengthens social connections. Gratitude encourages healthy relationships.

Studies have found that gratitude not only helps us, but also improves the person feel grateful for state of mind and health as well. Relationships are built on reciprocity- of love, trust, respect, giving, and gratitude.

3. Increases Happiness

Gratitude is strongly correlated with greater happiness and satisfaction. It increases self-esteem, enhances positive emotions, and makes us more optimistic. Feeling and expressing gratitude turns our mental focus to the positive which compensates for our tendency to focus on all the worries and negative aspects in our lives.

Gratitude fosters positive emotions, like joy, love, and contentment, and all the feelings that cause you to be miserable and sad. Research has found that gratitude loosens the grip of negative emotions like hate, anger, jealousy, sadness, anxiety, and stress, for it's impossible to have all those feelings and be grateful at the same time. Negative emotions destroy our happiness.

4. Improves Physical Health

Studies have shown that practicing gratitude can have a positive impact on physical health. It slows the effects of Neurodegenerative disorders and leads to decreased inflammation and lower blood pressure. Gratitude is also associate with higher levels of good cholesterol, lower levels of bad cholesterol (LDL), lower blood pressure, improved immune function, and faster recovery from illness or surgery.

Studies have also shown that grateful people engage in more exercise, have better food choices and eating habits, are less likely to smoke and abuse alcohol, and have higher rates of medication compliance factors that leads to a healthier, happier life.

Grateful people (especially people that are grateful to God) have between 9-13 percent lower levels of Hemoglobin A1c, a key marker of glucose control that plays a significant role in the diagnosis of diabetes. One study found that gratitude was linked to fewer signs of heart disease.

5. Boosts Resilience

A recent study demonstrated that gratitude actually helps us to build resilience, the ability to thrive under trying circumstances. It gives us better emotional coping skills.

Positive emotions like gratefulness help us to widen our mental openness and creativity and allows us to be more optimistic, and more capable of our endeavors. Because grateful people use effective coping skills, they are less stressed when problems arise.

When faced with adversity, expressing the things you are grateful for can provide a fresh perspective and enable you to find the silver lining even in the most difficult circumstances.

6. Reduces Stress And Anxiety

Gratitude reduces stress levels by shifting your focus from negative thoughts and promoting a more positive and appreciative mindset. Taking the time to feel gratitude can improve your emotional well-being by helping you cope with stress.

In fact, studies have found that a single act of thoughtful gratitude produces an immediate 10% increase in happiness, and a 35% reduction in depressing symptoms. Research shows that gratitude counters stress and anxiety, and balances it out.

Practicing gratefulness is the best kept secret to help you reduce stress in the event stressful circumstances arise. Gratitude allows you to detach from a stressful time and savor a positive memory or experience.

7. Prayer

Praying daily has been associated with increased levels of dispositional gratitude. Prayer is a great way to incorporate more gratitude into your life; it is a helpful tool for generating feelings of thankfulness.

Prayer offers concentrated focus on things that we can be grateful for. Espessing gratitude through prayer is a profound way to evoke a sense of awe and appreciation.

As you pray, you can express gratitude for the world you live in, for the life you've been given, the air you breathe, the body that carries you from point A to point B, and giving thanks for being alive.

Keep A Gratitude Journal

A gratitude journal gives you a place where you can reflect upon the things you appreciate on a regular basis. Take a few moments every evening to jot down 5 things that made you happy that day, regardless of how trivial they may be. This will help you see the glass half-full, and it also gives you something you can reflect upon if feelings of stress or sadness start to creep back in.

Think about what you're thankful for - family and friends, your home or a beautiful sunny day, something you've accomplished, the delicious meal you cooked, a chat with a loved one. Writing these thoughts down can help you stay positive during difficult times.

Journaling at the end of the day can help you highlight positive experiences and recognize that things are going better than you might have thought.

Being grateful has wide-ranging benefits for your mental, emotional, and physical well-being, as well as your relationships with others. It is a simple yet powerful tool for cultivating a more positive and fulfilling life.

Studies have shown that practicing gratitude on a daily basis can make you happier, lower stress, protect you from depression, help promote deep sleep, boost your immune system and improve your relationships.

Establish a daily practice in which you remind yourself of the gifts, grace, benefits, and good things you enjoy.

Conclusion

Our lives are filled with reasons to be thankful. We need to start noticing them. Today start counting your blessing, and soon your life will be healthier and happier than you could ever think or imagine. Counting your blessings and taking the time to be grateful for good things in your life has far-reaching positive effects.