We often are told that we should count our blessings every day. I never bothered until I read the study by Dr. Robert A. Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. In researching gratitude, Dr. Emmons found that study participants who kept a list of a few things they were grateful for each day tended to have not only more energy and enthusiasm but also exercised more, slept better and were more tolerant of pain. People who feel grateful are more likely to help others and thus have more friends, and close relationships promote well being as well as having a positive effect on blood pressure and cholesterol. Gratitude is correlated with increased happiness.
You can concentrate on being grateful by recognizing what is going well — it can be your health, your home, your family, your work; any experience has the potential of producing gratitude.
Right now, I am grateful that I am writing this column and able to express my thoughts. I am also grateful for the cup of coffee and scone I took from breakfast, the fact that the shirt I am wearing did not shrink in the wash. I am looking forward to lunch with my poetry group and a phone call from my daughter, who is traveling. It can be everything and anything. What it takes is awareness. We need to pay attention, stop to savor the moment, feel lucky to see a sunset or a flower or a grandchild’s smile or just focus on the sensation of being alive.
It is easy to be grateful when things are going well, but it is even more important to count your blessings when facing challenges. It is under times of stress that gratitude exerts its most powerful influence. It keeps life in perspective.
You cannot be grateful and angry or resentful or anxious at the same time. One thing that may interfere with people being grateful is comparing yourself with others who have more than you do, more money, better education, better job, more friends, better social skills, better looking, more athletic… the list can be endless. Yet we do not look at people who have less of these things. In being so one-sided, we have the tendency to see ourselves as less than, in other words, inadequate.
Thinking poorly of ourselves as compared with others is a painful feeling, so we respond with either depression or anger at the person who makes us feel this way. We often badmouth high achievers and are happy to see celebrities fail or caught off-guard with their mouths full. It is comforting to feel that they, too, are flawed. Taking people we admire and are well thought of down a few pegs equalizes the playing field.
For some reason, looking at people who are further down that hypothetical hierarchical success ladder does not make us feel more secure. We only look up the rungs of that ladder, not down. It is when we realize how much we have been given, how much more than so many others, that we become filled with gratitude.
So here is some homework for all my readers: Stop right now, look around you and notice the view outside your window, the painting on your wall. Be grateful for the fact that you can read and think, that you have a good friend, that you can breathe, that you can love. Stop for a minute, pay attention and be grateful.
– Natasha Josefowitz taught the first course in the U.S. on women in management and is the author or 20 books. She lives at the White Sands in La Jolla.