19 Nov Be grateful…Be happy
Please enjoy below yet another great article on the benefits of gratitude and how, among other things, it’s guaranteed to enhance your happiness…
Life gets better when you adopt a gratitude attitude. David Hochman tries it out.
On day one of my self-proclaimed Month of Gratitude, my five-year-old son woke up _ã–bored_ã at 5:15 a.m., I spied a speeding ticket in my wife_ã_s purse, and our water heater sputtered to its death as I was getting into the shower. Ordinarily, I would have started grousing and the day would_ã_ve been off to an ugly start. But this day was different. How cute my child_ã_s dimples are even at this ungodly hour. How fetching my wife_ã_s taste for adventure. Only 29 days to go.
Just a week earlier, as I struggled with the feeling that I_ã_d been put on this earth to load and unload the dishwasher, I_ã_d decided it was time to end my reflexive complaining. But it wasn_ã_t simply the little things that were gnawing at me. All of a sudden, my friends were dealing with bad news_ã”cancer diagnoses, divorce, job loss. Shouldn_ã_t I be celebrating my relative good fortune?
I_ã_d heard about the feel-good benefits of a gratitude attitude. What was less clear was how to move from griping to gushing. Hoping for tips, I called Robert A. Emmons, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who pioneered research on the benefits of positive thinking. Emmons quoted new studies that indicated that even pretending to be thankful raises levels of the chemicals associated with pleasure and contentment: serotonin and dopamine. Live as if you feel gratitude, he said, and soon the real thing will come.
He recommended keeping a log of everything I_ã_m grateful for in a given week or month. One major study showed that people who wrote down what they are grateful for felt 25 percent happier after ten weeks than those who did not. They even felt better about their jobs and exercised an hour and a half more per week.
Read more about how to be thankful and find happiness – click here