Whatever situation we’re in, gratitude can highly improve our disposition, allows us to see the good in the bad, and ultimately creates more happiness in our lives. It’s been proven that gratitude practices can increase your mental health. So how can you make gratitude a part of your life? What are some gratitude examples that you can learn from right away?

In this article, we’ll learn how to be grateful in the simplest of ways, while discussing different examples of how you can be more grateful!

What is gratitude anyway?

To begin, what is gratitude and what does it feel like? It can be as simple as uttering the words “Thank you” when we receive something nice from other people. We all know this because, as children, we were trained to express our thanks as a sign of good manners.

But, if we delve deeper into gratitude, it’s not just about being thankful for material things. Gratitude is more about appreciating life itself and everything that comes with it.

Personally, being grateful is that lighthearted feeling when you’re content with where you’re at and what you have. It’s accepting your present and knowing that you’re not living the worst life despite the challenges that you face.

Gratitude is also what we often hear as “counting our blessings.” As we go through our individual journeys, feeling grateful means that we find pockets of joy in every turn. Even the smallest things are worthy to be grateful for especially when the road we’re treading on seems tough.

Why is it important to be grateful?

It’s true that life gets easier when you’re grateful for almost everything in your life – be it good or bad, big or small. In fact, science agrees!

The science of being grateful

In this study, one group of participants were given a gratitude writing intervention where they “gratefully remember” a hope that has been fulfilled in the past. Compared to the control group, participants who were grateful gained an increased state of happiness and hope for the future. This proves that taking a moment of gratitude can certainly improve your emotional state!

Another effect of gratitude is getting us through tough times. A study has found that teachers who experience burnout at work could have higher life satisfaction and lower emotional exhaustion when they entered an eight-week gratitude intervention program.

By the way: Do you find it hard to be happy and in control of your life? It may not be your fault. To help you feel better, we’ve condensed the information of 100’s of articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet to help you be more in control.

Don’t Miss Out On Happiness

Find happiness with this 10-step mental health cheat sheet.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

Gratitude can improve your marriage

Even married couples can also reap significant benefits from gratitude! According to this study, spouses increase their marital satisfaction through expressing gratitude, which means that a simple thank you can surely go a long way in a relationship.

Gratitude can also help reduce depressive symptoms among patients just by keeping a gratitude list.

What are some gratitude examples?

It’s much more natural to feel grateful when everything’s going our way: when we manifest our dream job, when we receive a bonus at work, or when we finally take the most relaxing holiday that we truly deserve.

But, as we’ve established earlier, being grateful doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to be living the time of our lives – especially now that we’re at a point in history where our lives may have been turned upside down by the pandemic.

My personal example of gratitude

In my case, I lost my full-time job in the middle of the pandemic, a job that I’m good at and where I feel valued and fulfilled.

Given this situation, it’s easy to feel like my career has ended and my life has turned into shambles. I’m not going to say that it didn’t make me feel upset – of course, it did.

But, through this experience, I learned how to find value in the other things that seemed to be doing okay in my life considering such circumstances.

In this challenging time in my life, I’ve learned to be grateful for:

• My health and my family’s.
• Being safe at home.
• Having skills that allow me to find work.
• Having a source of income.
• Finding new ways to connect with my loved ones.
• My resilience in the face of adversity.

Because of this attitude, I was able to pick myself up from a hard fall. It kept me going and helped me grow amidst the struggles.

How can we practice gratitude?

Practicing gratitude is such a simple act, yet it can be so powerful. Here, I’m giving you a few tips on how to incorporate gratitude into your daily life.

1. Focus on the present

The past and the future can be major sources of anxiety for any of us. Negative energy brought by regret, failure, fear, or worry can make us feel like there’s nothing good in our lives.

But, if we just take a moment to appreciate the present, it will allow us to see the things that make life worth living.

Grounding ourselves in the present drives contentment. By living in the moment, we become grateful for what we have, and we learn not to take things for granted. Just being thankful for a new day and for existing here and now can already go a long way.

2. Be grateful for the bad

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve learned to find gratitude even in trying times. Another personal example is when I get anxiety attacks. Even though it can get hard to manage, at the end of it, I still feel grateful for what I had to overcome because I’m able to be in touch with myself, learn my inner workings, and become stronger each time.

It takes a lot of effort to find the beauty in pain. But, when we have the courage to do so, it makes our struggles much more bearable and fruitful.

3. Keep a gratitude journal

Keeping a list of the things that we’re grateful for makes gratitude much more tangible.

Because you have a list, you can see what you truly value in life, who are the people for keeps, and what you need more of. With a journal, gratitude can also have a lingering or permanent effect because you’ve written them down on paper. Gratitude is one of the many benefits of journaling.

If you’re writing a list, the things that you’re grateful for don’t have to be grand or written in a poetic way. It can be as simple as a bulleted entry of what made your morning extra special that day. Perhaps, it was the way the sun hit your breakfast table, or how you didn’t get any notifications on your phone when you woke up.

These are just simple examples of what you can be grateful for. The point I’m trying to make is that it can be anything. Just grab a pen and paper and start writing.

4. Maintain a gratitude ritual

When you’ve decided to keep a gratitude journal, you may incorporate it in your routine.

Perhaps, you jot down five things you’re grateful for before you go to bed. Or, you can also write stuff down whenever it feels right – it’s all up to you.

Aside from journaling, you can also find other ways to set a gratitude ritual. In my experience at work, we make it a part of our daily morning meetings to say one thing that we’re grateful for. It doesn’t even have to be work-related. Personally, it sets the tone of my day. It helps to take a moment to look around, and find something to be thankful for, even in the mundane.

Another tip is to have a gratitude buddy. It can be a friend with whom you can exchange daily texts about what makes you grateful. Or, you can tag your partner along, and, instead of simply wishing each other good night, you can also mention what you’re grateful for during that day.

5. Give back

When you’re grateful for something, wouldn’t it be nicer and more fulfilling if you passed that feeling around?

• If you’re grateful for your education, try sharing your learnings with others, one way or another.
• If you’re grateful for your recent paycheck, why not send a tip to the handyman who fixed your internet connection so you could work from home?

Spreading gratitude is like doubling its effect on you. It’s much more rewarding when you make other people appreciate life just as you do! This is how you can spread happiness, which can paradoxically make you happier as a result!

By the way: If you want to start feeling better and more productive, I’ve condensed the information of 100’s of our articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet here.

This Cheat Sheet Will Help You Be Happier and More Productive

Thrive under stress and crush your goals with these 10 unique tips for your mental health.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

Wrapping Up

Every little thing counts as a blessing if you have a grateful attitude. Contrary to popular belief, it actually doesn’t take much to live a great life. Just as long as you appreciate what you have, live in the moment, and spread positivity around, there’s nothing that can keep you from living your happiest life!

What do you think? Do you have an example of gratitude and how being grateful has lifted your spirits? I’d love to find out in the comments below!

Madel Asuncion Author

Writer and advocate for young people’s mental health. Firm believer of validating one’s feelings, prioritizing the inner-self, and finding happiness in a plate of chicken curry.

The post 5 Gratitude Examples and Tips to Be More Grateful Today appeared first on Tracking Happiness.

When the world seems full of challenges and hurdles, you might need some inspiration on what you can be thankful for. Seeing that gratitude is linked to happiness, you have all the more reason to practice thankfulness every once in a while.

In this article, I’ve listed 21 unique and inspiring things to be thankful for. I’ve asked different people and tried creating the most varying list to inspire you to be grateful.

Why should you be thankful today?

As I mentioned in the intro, there are plenty of reasons to be thankful today.

Even when luck doesn’t seem to be on your side, it’s always good to try to consider some of the things that are still kind to you.

But why exactly should you be thankful? How exactly does a little gratitude improve your life? There have been multiple fascinating studies that prove multiple links between thankfulness and positive factors in life, but I want to highlight two of them here.

Being grateful is related to an increase in your happiness

One of the most detailed studies on thankfulness was conducted in 2003 by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough. They monitored the happiness of a group of people after having asked the following question:

“There are many things in our lives, both large and small, that we might be grateful about. Think back over the past week and write down on the lines below up to five things in your life that you are grateful or thankful for.”

The study showed that people were approximately 10% happier when encouraged to think of things they’re grateful for.

10 percent may sound inconsequential, but if you practice gratitude every day, these small improvements will compound and may improve your mental health in a significant way.

By the way: Do you find it hard to be happy and in control of your life? It may not be your fault. To help you feel better, we’ve condensed the information of 100’s of articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet to help you be more in control.

Don’t Miss Out On Happiness

Find happiness with this 10-step mental health cheat sheet.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

Being thankful is linked to improved quality of sleep

In addition, another study reviewed the influence of gratitude on the quality of sleep.

This study tested whether individual differences in gratitude are related to sleep quality. Gratitude predicted greater subjective sleep quality and sleep duration, and less sleep latency and daytime dysfunction. These results were found after studying 400 people of all ages.

Long story short, thinking about things to be thankful for and grateful for before going to bed is linked to a better quality of sleep. This is also why it’s good to maintain a gratitude journal right before going to sleep!

What are you thankful for today?

Here are 21 examples of what you can be thankful for today. These examples are from real people, as I went online and asked around:

What is something that you are grateful for? For example, you can be grateful for someone smiling at you, for a beautiful sunset, or for some nice music that you recently listened to. Whatever comes to your mind is OK!

1. Thankful for having a loving dog

Who’s thankful: Suset Laboy

What are you thankful for today?

I am deeply grateful for my coffee-loving dog. Every morning, as soon as he smells the coffee my sister is making, he runs to the kitchen because he loves the smell.

When she is done, he chases her to the couch and sit on her and tries to convince her to give him some coffee. It is both hilarious and heartwarming, and I have started looking forward to this little morning ritual that brings some much needed levity into our days.

2. Thankful for having a caring parent

Who’s thankful: Nancy Osoro

What are you thankful for today?

I always start my day with a little gratitude as soon as my feet hit the floor. But lately, I have been very grateful for my mom who is constantly reminding me to drink my fresh ginger tea to keep me healthy during these crazy and stressful times.

Despite a 7-hour time difference, she makes it a point of calling every day. It makes me realize how lucky I am.

3. Thankful for the good deeds that exist in this world

Who’s thankful: Leia Kalani

What are you thankful for today?

We live in a crazy world and it’s far too easy to only see the negative around us. I am so grateful every time I see someone do a good deed for someone else, even a small gesture can have a huge impact.

Whether it’s helping a blind person cross the street, carrying groceries for the elderly, or even holding the door open for someone, these good deeds rekindle my belief in the good of humanity.

It’s easy to get bogged down by society but opening your eyes and seeing the good can make you thankful that there are still good people in the world.

4. Thankful for enjoying time spent with my family

This list wouldn’t be complete without a specific mention of family.

The truth is, I love spending time with my family, mainly my parents, brother, and sister. I’m thankful for the time my brother, sister and I ran a marathon together. Or the many dinners at my parents’ with the entire family. Or when my father takes my brother and me to Austria for a couple of days of hiking in the mountains.

I am extremely thankful for having a loving family, and it’s something that I should always try to remember when I’m feeling down or unhappy.

5. Thankful for a great show on Netflix

Who’s thankful: Nancy Irwin

What are you thankful for today?

I’m grateful for the amazing cast, set designers, and costumes of The Crown. I am so grateful that I can curl up in a soft blanket on my sofa and binge this amazing educational, historical, fascinating show during my free time now.

6. Thankful for the beautiful sunlight

Who’s thankful: Joy Rains

What are you thankful for today?

I’m grateful for sunlight! Yesterday afternoon, a sunbeam entered my home through the dining room window. Bright yellow circles of light landed on the legs of my dining room chairs. Each chair looked to be adorned with glistening jewels. I smiled, grateful to be a witness to nature’s magic.

7. Thankful for the many good memories in my life

This is something that I’m personally very grateful for in my life.

I keep an entire memory journal dedicated to remembering the many good memories of my life.

I find that remembering good memories helps me maintain a happy mind. Thinking back about that time that I laughed my ass off about something silly brings a smile to my face. This is something I try to do daily, whenever I find a moment to stand still and think about my life.

8. Thankful for having a roof above my head

Who’s thankful: Tessa Hull

What are you thankful for today?

I’m grateful for knowing that I’m not “stuck” in the house but “safe” in the house while others out there cannot be so lucky, either not having a roof over their head or not feeling safe in their own home. Knowing how to reframe my thoughts when I’m feeling rubbish helps.

I’m also super grateful for a steady supply of Italian cheese. Because not everything you’re grateful for needs to be so serious.

9. Thankful for experiencing the struggles in life

Who’s thankful: Noelle Creamer

What are you thankful for today?

Something that I am grateful for are struggles. To me, they are a gift. Rather than living a life of luxury and ease, my struggles over the years have taught me value, wisdom, and compassion. They have led me to spiritual growth.

The greater the challenge I face, the more I learn, the more I progress, and the stronger I become. For that, I am grateful.

10. Thankful for being able to go on walks

Who’s thankful: Emily Adams

What are you thankful for today?

I am grateful to have my health and the fact that I can still spend time in nature. On my walk today I was able to see four baby foxes and just soak it all in and I am grateful for that.

11. Thankful for spending time in nature

Who’s thankful: Nekeshia Hammond

What are you thankful for today?

I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to spend time in nature. Whether it is taking the time to watch a sunset, spending time on a beach, or enjoying time in the mountains (if I’m visiting another place), nature offers such peace of mind.

As we can all get so busy with the day-to-day, it’s nice to unwind, take some deep breaths, and focus on the beauty that nature has to offer.

12. Thankful for getting to spend time with my girlfriend

This is one that I personally wanted to include in this list. I’m incredibly grateful for the fact that my girlfriend and I somehow found each other in this world with over 7 billion people.

My relationship is one of my biggest happiness factors. I love my girlfriend and she makes my life happier on a daily basis. It almost sounds cheesy to write it down, but I just don’t want to take this relationship for granted. I feel lucky to have her in my life and wouldn’t want to imagine what it’d be like if it was any different.

It’s one of the things I’m most thankful for in life.

13. Thankful for waking up each morning with the birds outside of my window

Who’s thankful: Lynell Ross

What are you thankful for today?

Each morning, I am treated with a visit from these precious little birds, first flying back and forth, then hovering in front of the glass as if they are saying good morning before they sit to drink their nectar.

I love seeing their tiny little hummingbird shape and color so close up, reminding me to be aware of nature, which is so comforting and peaceful.

14. Thankful for appreciating music

This is another one that I personally wanted to add to the list.

If you still have your hearing, then you should be grateful for the beauty of sound. The fact that multiple sound waves combined form music that can carry emotion, tension, and excitement is something that we often take for granted.

Music has the power to move. I personally experience this every once in a while, when a song sucks me in and takes me on a journey. This journey always ends up putting a smile on my face, and sometimes even brings me to tears. Tears of happiness, that is.

The fact that we’re able to hear and appreciate sounds and music is definitely something to be thankful for.

15. Thankful for getting to be vulnerable

Who’s thankful: Michelle Kuei

What are you thankful for today?

I am grateful for all the connections I am able to make when I let my guard down and become vulnerable. Being able to use my vulnerability as a superpower to share my story with others provides healing in the heart of others. It gives them strength and comfort knowing they are not alone.

This brings me joy, fulfillment, and purpose in my heart. I am grateful for the connections I have made through being vulnerable and sharing my story.

16. Thankful for seeing my strawberry plant grow

Who’s thankful: Chris Kaiser

What are you thankful for today?

One small thing I’m super grateful for is seeing the flowers on the very first strawberry plant I ever planted. We planted it about 3 weeks ago on our balcony, and since then I’m diligently counting every single flower it produces (13 in total so far). Every tiny new flower puts a broad smile to my face.

17. Thankful for the not-so-great stuff in life

Who’s thankful: Allen Klein

What are you thankful for today?

This may sound strange, but I’m grateful for the not-so-great stuff in my life. They are my greatest teachers.

For example, I learned about living fully from those who have passed on. I’ve learned to appreciate my body more from the times things don’t function as they should. And now, I’m learning about being grateful for the parks in my neighborhood now that I have to shelter in place during this pandemic.

18. Thankful for my life partner

Who’s thankful: Saurabh Jindal

What are you thankful for today?

The biggest gift to me has been my wife, Rashmi Agarwal. She has been an unflinching pillar of support as I have gone through many difficult times while trying to build my start-up.

She is one of the smartest persons I have met and has an uncanny ability to look at any situation from multiple angles. As an entrepreneur, I sometimes work on my own and with small teams – and with her help I am able to achieve much more than what I would otherwise.

19. Thankful for all the farmers and drivers who nourish us with fresh food

Who’s thankful: Naz Beheshti

What are you thankful for today?

I’m grateful for tasty celery again for my daily celery and lemon juice. I was about to take a break from my morning ritual since I was getting really bitter tasting celery at the store. But I persisted and waited in line for it, and now it’s tasty again.

I’m grateful for all the farmers and drivers who nourish us with fresh and tasty products!

20. Thankful for technology

Who’s thankful: Terrell Strayhorn

What are you thankful for today?

I’m really grateful for technology. Cell phones that keep me connected to my family, kids, colleagues, and students during the pandemic. Laptops and iPads that enable video connections via Zoom, provide “mental breaks” to play games or watch videos, and even apps for journaling and writing. Homepods and headphones that let me listen to music as a backdrop to serious activities like writing or analyzing data, but also music as a distraction to the crisis impacting us all.

Today, I’m grateful for technology.

21. Thankful for the feeling of putting on a fresh pair of socks

As a final item on this list, I wanted to finish with something silly and funny. But that doesn´t mean it’s less true.

Whenever I buy a new 5-pack of socks, I’m always surprised by how nice it feels to put them on for the first time. The feeling of smoothness that comes with putting on a pair of new socks is something I am truly grateful for.

Don’t you agree?

By the way: If you want to start feeling better and more productive, I’ve condensed the information of 100’s of our articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet here.

This Cheat Sheet Will Help You Be Happier and More Productive

Thrive under stress and crush your goals with these 10 unique tips for your mental health.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

Wrapping up

There you have it. If you still can’t think of things to be thankful for, then I give up! I hope you now have a good understanding of why you should always be able to remember something to be thankful for. And don’t forget, you can be thankful for silly things that seem insignificant (like putting on a pair of fresh socks!).

Did I miss something that you would have liked to see on this list? Do you want to have your favorite thing to be thankful for listed in this article? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!

Hugo Huijer Author

Founder of Tracking Happiness, with over 100 interviews and a focus on practical advice, our content extends beyond happiness tracking. Hailing from the Netherlands, I’m a skateboarding enthusiast, marathon runner, and a dedicated data junkie, tracking my happiness for over a decade.

The post 21 Things to be Thankful For Today (With Examples!) appeared first on Tracking Happiness.

It isn’t always easy to express gratitude. We are continually presented with others’ lives which can lead us to make comparisons on what we have. Being grateful also goes against our human need to control areas of our life instead of just having acceptance for what it is. But taking the time to have more gratitude can create such a positive impact on our mental well-being and health.

This article will look at the meaning of gratitude, the benefits of being more grateful, how our levels of gratitude change over time, and some tips to help you be more grateful in life.

What does being grateful mean?

One definition of gratitude is that it is ‘…a strong feeling of appreciation to someone or something for what the person has done to help you’.

Professor Robert Emmons who has led extensive research within the field of gratitude goes a bit deeper into the definition. He says that gratitude is made up of two components.

1. We can confirm that there are good things in life, and we have received them.
2. We can recognize that these good things come from different sources outside of our own actions.

This interesting study discusses how gratitude plays a distinctive role in our emotional experiences. And that it differs from other positive traits such as optimism because it involves noticing positive experiences and outcomes (while optimism is directed towards expecting positive experiences and outcomes).

Being grateful also means we are:

• Being thankful.
• Showing kindness (to ourselves or others).
• Focusing our attention on what we appreciate in life.
• Having a positive mindset.
• Being present.
• Paying attention to our emotions.

It is another unique and evolutionary skill we have acquired as humans and is very much a social emotion, which helps us to build robust relationships.

Could you imagine if we as humans didn’t have the ability to show this emotion? I doubt that we would ever want to do things for each other again!

What are the benefits of being grateful?

Whether we are expressing gratitude towards ourselves or to others, being grateful brings many advantages and opportunities to explore a different way of thinking.

To start, gratitude has been found in several studies to be associated with greater happiness. It has also been linked to better well-being and greater life satisfaction.

Being grateful also helps to:

• Strengthen relationships with others.
• Feel more positive.
• Improve our physical health.
• Deal with demanding situations better.
• Lower stress, depression, and anxiety.
• Improve the quality of sleep.

Improving our levels of gratitude can clearly provide us with a host of benefits to our physical health, emotional wellbeing, and relationships. So, it seems well worth investing in this powerful, social emotion.

Do our levels of gratitude change over time?

This recent study found that gratitude does change across the life span, with older adults being found to have the greatest gratitude compared with younger people and middle-aged adults.

Professor Robert Emmons claims there is a trend towards greater emotional positivity with age. The reason behind this is as we get older, the brain becomes less active when presented with negative information. And at the same time, individuals increase their reactivity in response to positive information.

Despite these findings, some studies have found that gratitude does not change over time. Although, this research does suggest (like many other studies), that there are many developmental influences that affect an individual’s level of gratitude in life.

Some examples of developmental influences could be:

• Peer relationships.
• Hereditary or genetic predispositions.
• Parental attitudes.

What seems to be apparent here is there is no obvious answer as to whether gratitude changes over time, but clearly developmental and environmental factors play a huge role in our ability to be grateful.

It may be that having an awareness of potential influences in our life might be useful in our quest for gratitude.

I have personally found being more grateful comes with age. And I think part of that comes from living through different experiences and being able to reflect on situations in life.

I wonder if you have found your levels of gratitude changing as you’ve got older?

5 ways to be more grateful in life

Whether you want to learn how to be more grateful to others or show some more gratitude in your own life (or both!), feel free to check out some of these ideas.

1. Keep a gratitude journal

At first, it can feel quite difficult to suddenly conjure up all the things you are grateful for.

A good way of getting your thoughts down is by keeping a gratitude journal. Every day, try and write down 5 different things you are grateful for.

Remember these can be the smallest of things (the bus wasn’t late today!) or something on a much bigger scale.

Take time to reflect at the end of each day and think of a situation or experience you are grateful for. It may even surprise you what you write down.

2. Change to a more positive way of thinking

Changing our mindset to a more positive one is a valuable first step. Instead of thinking about what you haven’t got in life, focus on what you have got.

I often catch myself doing this when I am in a particularly bad mood. But now that I recognize this, I actively change my way of thinking to make it more positive. It really helps you to feel more grateful too!

Here’s one of our articles about how to change your perspective that will help you focus on the positive more.

3. Practise mindfulness or meditation

Practicing mindfulness and meditation means we are being fully in the present. And when we do this, it means we are not looking for something in the future or the past. It means that we’re just being grateful for where you are now.

It is an immensely powerful exercise and one which is highly recommended. If you want to learn more, here’s a starter on mindfulness and why it’s so important!

4. Appreciate others more

It is all too easy to wrap ourselves up in our own lives. But when we become more aware of other people and their needs and experiences, it can make us feel more grateful for our life and what we have been given.

When someone shows gratitude to me it feels amazing, and I instantly feel happy. So, let’s return the favor to someone else.

Make positive comments to your family and friends around you and show your appreciation more for things people have done for you.

Sometimes we can take those closest to us for granted. If you want to change that, here’s an article about how to be more appreciative of others.

5. Use social media in the right way

If you are tempted to announce on social media something negative or to complain about something, think about using social media to communicate your gratitude.

Stop yourself from expressing something negative, and instead post about something that you are thankful for.

We wrote an article about how to use social media positively, which comes with a lot more benefits to your mental health besides gratitude!

By the way: If you want to start feeling better and more productive, I’ve condensed the information of 100’s of our articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet here.

This Cheat Sheet Will Help You Be Happier and More Productive

Thrive under stress and crush your goals with these 10 unique tips for your mental health.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

Wrapping up

Gratitude is a valuable and essential emotion that fosters our social interactions with others. Not only does it improve our relationships when we are more grateful, but we can enjoy better physical health, life satisfaction, and happiness.

Your levels of gratitude may change over time or even fluctuate depending on your personal circumstances. But making gratitude a priority in your life and bringing yourself back to that is so important. It is all too easy to focus on what we haven’t got in life, but by simply changing this mindset we can develop a much more positive way of thinking. It can influence and transform our outlook in life for the better, helping us to lead happier and more contented lives.

Sarah Grocutt Author

Former teacher and lover of all things psychology. Born and raised in the UK. Full-time employed by my two wonderful children and self-confessed yoga addict.

The post 5 Ways to be More Grateful in Life (With Examples) appeared first on Tracking Happiness.

Gratitude is strongly correlated to positive emotions and good experiences, and the reason why is very simple to explain. When you are grateful, you are remembered of positive events and experiences in your life. Being grateful for these things allows your mind to think of these positive events, which encourages a positive mindset. A positive mindset is scientifically proven to be a factor of long-term happiness.

This is just one explanation of how gratitude makes us happier. In this article, I’ll show you 3 examples of why being grateful makes us happy, with actual examples from different people I’ve met over the years.

So how does gratitude lead to happiness? There are two ways to answer this question: by showing the results of actual studies on the topic and by showing you multiple anecdotal examples.

Research on gratitude and happiness

One of the most well-known studies on gratitude was conducted in 2003 by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough. They conducted a study in which they surveyed 192 participants – split into 3 groups – that were subjected to different situations. They were all asked to rate how they felt via a combination of 30 factors at the end of each day on a scale from 1 to 5. The answers were used to calculate a subjective well-being rating.

In addition, the 3 groups were tasked with an additional task as well, which differed randomly per participant. One of the groups was led to think about positive things as a result of the following assignment:

“There are many things in our lives, both large and small, that we might be grateful about. Think back over the past week and write down on the lines below up to five things in your life that you are grateful or thankful for.”

The other 2 groups were given other assignments, which had nothing to do with gratitude, thankfulness, or gratefulness at all. In the end, participants that were “forced” into a grateful mindset felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic about their life in the near future.

This is how the 3 groups were measured on the subjective well-being scale.

The study shows that people who are encouraged to think of things they’re grateful for are approximately 10% happier than those who are not.

Can thinking about gratitude make you happier?

This might not sound like a lot at first, but when talking about happiness, mood, and subjective well-being, this is a very significant result. See, things like happiness and mood are extremely hard to measure and define. The measurement of subjective things like these is distorted in a lot of ways, like biases, different measuring scales, and wrong interpretations to name a few.

The researchers have done a great job to eliminate as much of the distortion as possible, but this makes it difficult to gain any definitive conclusions from these studies.

Thinking about things to be grateful for accounted for an increase of 10% in happiness. A 10% increase in happiness as a result of practicing gratitude is very big in my opinion.

• That’s why people are so serious about practicing gratitude.
• That’s why gratitude journals are so trendy these days.
• It’s why I am writing this article today about the ways in which gratitude can make you happier!

Examples of how gratitude makes us happier

Academic papers are sometimes more difficult to understand than a simple anecdote. That’s why I wanted to include a couple of actual examples here, just to show you how much gratefulness can influence your happiness.

Here are a couple of examples of how being thankful can make you happier.

Example 1: Keeping a memory journal makes me grateful and happy

Have you ever heard of something called a “memory journal”? It’s a journal in which I write every memory of my life. My memory journal is about all the noteworthy things that happened to me when I didn’t yet keep a journal. I’ve explained why I keep a memory journal in this article.

Anyway, why is a memory journal relevant at this point? Because reading about my happy memories – as dumb, silly or funny they may be – brings a huge smile to my face. Being able to look back at my past memories like this encourages me to be extremely grateful for the life that I have. This gratefulness immediately results in a smile on my face.

The truth is that thinking back on past memories that you like is a great way to be happy. This positive effect of nostalgia has been studied a lot, for example by this study of the University of Southampton.

Example 2: Being thankful in a relationship

Expressing gratitude in a relationship is one of the easiest ways to share happiness. A good example of this can be seen from something I wrote in my happiness journal recently. I use this happiness journal to reflect on my life at certain points and to think back on the things that made me the happiest.

My relationship is usually a big cause of my happiness, and my happiness journal reminds me of that:

“As usual, my relationship was my biggest source of happiness this month. I’ve said it a lot of times already, but I love my girlfriend and she makes my life so much better. It almost sounds cheesy to repeat this every month, but I just don’t want to take this relationship for granted. I feel lucky to have her in my life and wouldn’t want to imagine what it’d be like if it was any different.”

Being thankful for my relationship makes it easier for me to not take this wonderful thing for granted. Even better, when I express my gratitude towards my partner, that happiness is actually spread out and encourages positive emotions within my girlfriend as well. This has been studied in a scientific paper about how gratitude is a solid foundation of a good relationship.

My anecdotal evidence of this scientific paper? Here it is: when my girlfriend read my recent update in which I mentioned how happy she makes me, she smiled at me and said “thanks”. Reading about how I was thankful for having her in my life actually made her happy as well!

That’s one of the most simple ways of how gratitude can make us happier.

Example 3: Happiness can be controlled via gratitude

Even though happiness is not always 100% within our control, we can always control a factor that is correlated to happiness: Gratitude!

As shown by the previously discussed studies, being grateful is strongly correlated to happiness. So even though we can’t always choose to be happy, we can still choose to express gratitude. Even when things are looking down.

A beautiful example of this comes from a post on Reddit from a couple of months ago. Something about this post really inspired me and got me thinking. I reached out to this anonymous Redditor straight away, asking if she’d be okay with me using her post as an example and she said yes!

Here is her story:

Yesterday morning I was frustrated with my husband for starting the laundry the night before and then leaving it all to be folded in the wash room. He was trying to be helpful, but it created more work for me (a stay at home mom with an infant and toddler).

I was so mad. I felt angry that he didn’t finish the job and that I had to now do an extra chore I hadn’t planned to do. I opened my laptop to send him an e-mail (he can’t use his phone at work) and started typing a passive aggressive message: “Thanks for leaving all the laundry for me to fold. Not helpful.”

But before I sent it, I thought about how it would feel for him to read that message at the start of his work day. What kind of tone would that set for him? And then when he got home, for us?

I remembered on our honeymoon how we met a married couple in their 50s at a national park campground. They were so happy. And they seemed so in love and so positive. They told my husband and I that every day they just make the effort to treat each other as if they had just met. To extend the kindness they would extend to a stranger to one another.

I deleted my message, and instead I typed “I hope you are having a good day so far. Can’t wait to see you when you get home. I love you so much.”

It felt so good to hit send.

When he got home, he told me how that message made his day.

I told him what I had initially planned to send and we were both able to laugh because by that time I had cooled off. He helped me fold the laundry and we had a wonderful night with our kids.

It’s so easy for us to make little comments and snips at our partners, but over time that chips away at the foundation. Pouring in love is much better.

This is such a beautiful example of how gratitude can be expressed at any moment. We don’t necessarily need to be happy in order to be grateful. It can actually go the other way around. Expressing gratitude first can result in happiness later.

The point I want to make here is this:

• Happiness can’t be controlled 100%.
• Showing gratitude for something can be done whenever we want it (nothing will stop us).
• Showing gratitude is scientifically (and anecdotally!) proven to correlate with happiness.

Practicing gratitude is a small but efficient way to control your happiness. And according to one of our recent studies, people who feel like happiness can be controlled are 32% happier than those who don’t.

Therefore, practicing gratitude gives us the ability to influence our own happiness more often than we are aware of!

If you leave this article only with this small lesson learned, then I’ll be happy!

By the way: If you want to start feeling better and more productive, I’ve condensed the information of 100’s of our articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet here.

This Cheat Sheet Will Help You Be Happier and More Productive

Thrive under stress and crush your goals with these 10 unique tips for your mental health.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

Closing words

Being grateful is scientifically correlated to a higher feeling of happiness. I’ve shown you multiple examples of how being grateful for something can directly have a positive influence on your happiness. So even when you are not completely in control of all your emotions all the time, showing gratitude can at least help you steer your happiness in the best direction possible. That’s the most important takeaway here.

Was there anything I’ve missed? Do you want to share your own story of how showing gratitude makes you happier? Do you disagree with anything I said? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. Let’s meet!

Hugo Huijer Author

Founder of Tracking Happiness, with over 100 interviews and a focus on practical advice, our content extends beyond happiness tracking. Hailing from the Netherlands, I’m a skateboarding enthusiast, marathon runner, and a dedicated data junkie, tracking my happiness for over a decade.

The post The Powerful Relationship Between Gratitude And Happiness (With Actual Examples) appeared first on Tracking Happiness.