An Attitude of Gratitude

This month's Readers Digest has a piece called: How the New Science of Thank You Can Change your Life, and what that can mean in terms of health and well-being. Research was done using college students, dividing them into three groups. The first was to concentrate/write about daily hassles, like traffic problems and everything that irritated them that day. The second group was assigned to write about what they were grateful for, and the third group just focused on shopping at the mall, buying shoes, that sort of activity.

Researchers discovered that the daily gratitude group became, by and large, young people who were happiest, were at ease in every circumstance, were comfortable to be around. They also went on to suffer fewer health issues in their lives. They had more joy, more energy, were more optimistic. "The results: The people who focused on gratitude were just flat-out happier. They saw their lives in favorable terms. They reported fewer negative physical symptoms such as headaches or colds, and they were active in ways that were good for them...plain and simple, those who were grateful had a higher quality of life."

The article is quite extensive, but it certainly is on target. "If you were going to have dinner with anyone, you'd want someone from the gratitude group at your table." The piece was taken from the book, Thank You Power: Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You, by Deborah Norville.

I've always been a very optimistic person, but sometimes I forget to focus on how grateful I am for our having found our 12 acres of wooded land by the river, for all the singing birds in our many trees, for our new puppy Sadie Mae, who makes us laugh out loud at her antics. There is so much for us to be grateful for, every single day. And look at the blessings it can bring!