What Is Gratitude and How Do You Practice It?
Gratitude is a positive emotion or feeling that involves being thankful and appreciative for various things and people in your life.1 Being grateful encourages feelings of appreciation, hope, kindness, warmth, and optimism.
While expressing gratitude may come more naturally for some people than others, anyone can learn to be grateful for the things in their life—both big and small. In doing so, you can experience several potential benefits including greater life satisfaction, improved relationships, and even better heart health.2
What Sparks Gratitude?
Experiencing gratitude is often a highly personal experience and will depend largely on the things in your life that make you happy, hopeful, or encouraged. It could be as simple as finding the perfect parking spot on a crowded street or more complex, such as feeling grateful for your loved ones when you're going through a hard time.3
It's also important to note that while practicing gratitude seems to work for many people, the act of thankfulness is not an effective tool for everyone.3 In fact, research has shown that some people are more prone to gratitude than others due to differences in their brains, genes, and personalities.4
For instance, researchers have found that people who are more prone to gratitude have more gray matter in their right inferior temporal cortex. This area of the brain is thought to be linked to the ability to interpret other people’s intentions.5 Meanwhile, another study found that people who tend to be more grateful show more brain activity and may be more altruistic (or, selfless).67
But, these differences do not mean you cannot learn to practice gratitude if you want to. Simply focus on things in your life that you might appreciate. These things may include major aspects of your life like your health, loved ones, and home—and the simple things like seeing a show you enjoy or watching the sunset.
How Does Gratitude Work?
Gratitude is both a state of mind and a personality trait. In other words, people can experience gratitude for something or someone at a particular moment in time, but they also can experience gratitude as a state of being. When you practice gratitude as part of your daily life, this is considered a trait. When gratitude is a way of life for you, it becomes a state of mind.8
Interestingly, when you express gratitude—regardless of whether it is in the moment or a way of life—it activates certain regions of your brain including your reward pathways. When these parts of your brain become activated, you experience an increase in serotonin and dopamine, which are two chemicals in your brain that help regulate mood and induce happiness. As such, the more you give gratitude, the happier you begin to feel.9
Benefits of Gratitude
Expressing gratitude is part of a positive psychology approach that has been consistently linked to happiness and life satisfaction—even when you face setbacks or disappointments. Not only can gratitude boost more positive emotions, but it also helps you deal with adversity. Plus, giving thanks comes with a variety of emotional and physical health benefits.
Improves Relationships
According to a study published in Emotion, expressing gratitude toward other people and thanking them for what they do can improve your relationship with them. In fact, the researchers found that thanking a new acquaintance makes them more likely to seek an ongoing relationship with you. Giving thanks to your friends, family, and coworkers can also have a positive effect on your relationship with them and strengthen your bond.10
Boosts Patience
One study looked at how practicing gratitude can promote patience, particularly when it comes to making financial decisions. Researchers found that people with higher levels of gratitude over the little things in life are more likely to be patient overall and make sensible and thoughtful decisions when dealing with their finances—such as saving or investing money for the future.11
Builds Resiliency
A group of researchers also found that incorporating a gratitude practice along with attending therapy can help people recover from traumatic events like a global pandemic or sexual assault. The study found that giving thanks for the positive things in your life can promote your resiliency in dealing with life's challenges, decrease post-traumatic stress, and encourage growth after experiencing trauma or grief.12
It's worth noting that everyone experiences trauma differently and gratitude alone cannot help you heal. Adding a gratitude practice to other interventions such as talking to trusted loved ones or going to therapy with a licensed mental health professional are also key.
Encourages Forgiveness
Studies have found that gratitude is a key factor in forgiving others. In fact, when coupled with emotional intelligence and hope, people who express gratitude are more likely to forgive others for their mistakes and harm compared to those who don't practice gratitude. While it can be difficult to forgive people who hurt you, giving forgiveness builds emotional strength and lets go of resentment and anger.13
Reduces Stress
Expressing gratitude can also help people to reframe negative experiences and find meaning in them. One study found that people who expressed gratitude had more positive coping strategies like seeking emotional support and fewer negative coping strategies such as denial, self-blame, or substance use. Overall, people who expressed gratitude felt more in control of their livelihood and better able to cope with the stress and uncertainty of difficult situations.14
Increases Sense of Well-Being
Recent research shows that practicing gratitude can encourage more positive emotions and moods, greater appreciation for life, higher levels of optimism, and less anxiety. These factors all contribute to balanced mental health and a healthy sense of well-being.15
Promotes Heart Health
Research shows that practicing gratitude is not just important for improving mental health outcomes, but can also have positive effects on your heart health. One analysis of 19 studies found that practicing gratitude can lower your risk of heart disease. The review of these studies showed that giving thanks can lower your blood pressure, reduce inflammation, and improve stress levels—all of which can help support your heart's function.216
Leads to Greater Life Satisfaction
Practicing gratitude can also improve overall life satisfaction. For instance, research shows that people who regularly give thanks are happier and more content with the circumstances in their lives. Those who experience happier emotions also experience fewer symptoms of depression and other mental health conditions.1718
Tips for Incorporating Gratitude Into Daily Life
Making gratitude a regular habit can help you learn to recognize good things in your life even when you experience challenges.3 If you want to incorporate gratitude into your life, there are a few things you can do to make it a regular practice, such as:19
Start small by verbally saying thank you for one good thing in your life (such as a tasty meal, the feeling of sun on your skin, or laughing with a friend)
Use a gratitude journal to write and reflect on what you're grateful for each day
Try mindfulness practices such as yoga, meditation, or deep breathing to help reduce intrusive thoughts and make room for grateful thoughts instead
Give thanks to others when you're talking to them (e.g., thanks for spending time with me today or thank you for checking in on me when I was feeling sick)
Even if practicing gratitude initially feels unnatural, try not to give up. Researchers note that your brain's inner circuitry can be changed, even if it doesn't feel like it. In fact, your past history and years of learned behaviors can all be neutralized by grateful thinking. But, it takes time, effort, and commitment to see results—so patience is key when starting this habit.19
Limitations to Gratitude
While having a positive outlook and expressing gratitude for various things in your life can be beneficial, too much positivity can be toxic (a concept known as toxic positivity). This is especially the case if you expect gratitude to help you overcome extreme life challenges or mental health conditions. In fact, "positive only" thinking can cause you to disregard mental health conditions and ignore painful emotions that need to be addressed.20
Keep in mind: gratitude is not a cure-all for issues like major depressive disorder. In fact, The Ohio State University analyzed 27 different studies and found that using gratitude as an intervention is not as effective as once thought. What's more, researchers note that it isn't helpful to tell people with symptoms of depression or anxiety to show more gratitude for the good things they have.21
Suggesting to someone that gratitude exercises can fix their anxiety or depression is overly simplistic. It's also potentially harmful and minimizes their experience and pain. Most studies that have looked at the positive effects of practicing gratitude also incorporated professional therapy or counseling as well to help reduce symptoms of mental health conditions, like depression or generalized anxiety disorder.21
Another study also found that stuffing painful experiences or negative emotions can actually backfire and cause more pain. For instance, the people in the study with fibromyalgia who expressed anger had less pain than those who did not express their feelings.22 So, while expressing gratitude can be helpful, it should not be used to mask or ignore negative feelings and emotions—which are valid and also deserve to be expressed in healthy ways.
