The Beauty of Gratitude

Gratitude = Happiness

Grateful individuals have at least 3 characteristics

Sense of abundance; They don’t feel deprived in life.
Appreciation of simple pleasures: Study results indicate enjoyment in the common everyday pleasures of life.
Quick to appreciate the contribution of other’s to their wellbeing: Grateful individuals are more likely to admit of the divine too!

Gratitude causes positive effect. Possible that happiness enhances gratitude

Positive effect research provides reasons why gratitude is more likely in the presence of positive effect
The Gratitude Conundrum: Does Gratitude cause happiness or Happiness cause Gratitude?
1. It’s both! Gratitude enhances happiness and happiness enhances gratitude as well
  1. The Cycle of Virtue: upward spiral of positive effect proposed to produce benefits for individual that tend to feed into further benefits.

The Grateful Trait

McCullough & Watkins Research indicates that there is a grateful train and it can be reliably measured.
1. There studies produced 2 major conclusions;
  1. Grateful individuals tend to be happy individuals
  2. Grateful thinking improves mood.

8 ways gratitude boosts happiness:

Grateful thinking promotes savoring of positive life experiences. By relishing and taking pleasure in some of the gifts of your life, you will be able to extract the maximum possible satisfaction and enjoyment from your current circumstances.
Expressing gratitude bolsters self-esteem and self-worth. When you realize how much people have done for you or how much you have accomplished, you feel more confident and efficacious
Gratitude helps cope with stress and trauma. That is, the ability to appreciate your life circumstances may be an adaptive coping method by which you positively reinterpret stressful or negative life experiences
Expression of gratitude encourages moral behavior. Grateful people are more likely to help others and be less materialistic.
Gratitude helps build social bonds, strengthening existing relationships and cultivating new ones. You become truly aware of the value of your family and friends and are more likely to treat them better, possibly creating a loop where strong relationships give you something to be grateful for and in turn fortifying those very same relationships. (Emmons, Robert)
Expressing gratitude tends to inhibit invidious comparisons with others. If you are appreciative for what you have, you are less likely to pay attention to or envy the possessions of others.
The practice of gratitude is incompatible with negative emotions and may diminish or deter such feelings of anger, bitterness, and greed. It is difficult to feel guilty, resentful, jealous when you are feeling grateful.
Gratitude helps us thwart hedonic adaption (the ability to rapidly adjust to any new circumstance or event): The happiness we feel when we gain something good in life is short-lived due to hedonic adaption, which is the enemy of happiness. Gratitude is very successful in combating the effects of this adaptation by preventing people from taking the good in life for granted.

Possible books to read: