“Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.” – Lionel Hampton
Earlier this month I attended a business conference in Dallas. One of the speakers at the conference whose topic was keys to success, cited an eight year study conducted by Dr. Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California – Davis, that discovered what gives lives meaning is an attitude of gratitude. Dr. Emmons subsequently published his findings in a book entitled Thanks: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier.
Emmons’ study found that gratitude improves emotional and physical health, and it can strengthen relationships and communities. According to Emmons, “Without gratitude, life can be lonely, depressing and impoverished. Gratitude enriches human life. It elevates, energizes, inspires and transforms. People are moved, opened and humbled through expressions of gratitude.”
However, Emmons notes that cultivating a gratitude attitude is not as easy as one might think. It merely a positive emotion, and it is not innate to our nature. Rather, it must be a “chosen attitude.” In order to achieve a true gratitude attitude we need banish any “victim attitudes” we might embrace and overcome any sense of entitlement and deservedness we may harbor. Here are some of the tangible, causal benefits that the study found people with gratitude attitudes possess:
- Well-Being: Grateful people report higher of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and lower levels of depression and stress. The disposition toward gratitude appears to enhance states of pleasant feeling more than it diminishes unpleasant emotions. Grateful people do not suffer from a Polly Anna syndrome, i.e., they don’t deny or ignore the negative aspects of life. However, their heightened sense of gratitude helps them to avoid getting mired in those inevitable unpleasant emotions that we all must face and confront.
- Mindset: A daily gratitude intervention (self-guided exercise) with young adults resulted in higher reported levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy.
- Pro-sociality: People with a strong disposition toward gratitude have the capacity to be emphatic and to take the perspective of others. They are rated as more generous and more helpful by people in their social networks. In the business world, those who possess such traits are more apt to be promoted, get raises and, in general achieve more success.
- Attainment: Those participants in the study who measured higher consciousness of gratitude were found to be more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to study participants in the control group.
- Spirituality: The study found that those who regularly attend religious services and engage in religious activities such as prayer or reading of religious material are more likely to be possessive of a gratitude attitude. Grateful people are more likely to acknowledge a belief in the interconnectedness of all life and a commitment to and responsibility to others which is a foundational tenant of spiritual belief.
- Materialism: Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods; they are less likely to judge their own and others success in terms of possessions accumulated; they are less envious of wealthy persons; and are more likely to share their possessions with others relative to less grateful persons.
I can’t comprehend of anyone who could objectively believe that they have nothing in their lives to be grateful for. Hence, it is not the absence of positive influences that inhibit the growth of our gratitude attitude. It is that we too often allow our negative emotions to overshadow and block our consciousness of that for which we are and should be grateful. I believe that by simply beginning each day in contemplation of five things for which we are grateful and ending our day doing the same is a great exercise we can all engage in to develop and enhance our gratitude attitude.
Gratitude isn’t a burdening emotion. Quite the contrary, gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for our today, and creates a vision for our tomorrow. It is the key that will unlock the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend….and opens our hearts to our heavenly possibilities.
“One can never pay in gratitude: one can only pay ‘in kind’ somewhere else in life.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Have an AWE-full weekend!
Bill