Gratitude also fosters empathy which enables us to grow and nurture our relationships with family, friends, mentors, colleagues, students, employees, team members, etc. As our empathy grows, we are more capable of understanding and valuing others' situations and time.
"More empathic people are less aggressive." Gratitude motivates people to express sensitivity and concern for others and stimulates pro-social behavior, according to DeWall.
"Expressing gratitude can positively change your brain," says Kristin Francis, MD, a psychiatrist at Huntsman Mental Health Institute. "It boosts dopamine and serotonin, the neurotransmitters in the brain that improve your mood immediately, giving you those positive feelings of pleasure, happiness, and well-being."
Gratitude often involves an element of perspective-taking, and this is another area of focus for us. Being able to see other people and creatures as separate to yourself, and to see their different experiences and perspectives on life is a crucial part of empathy.
Taking a closer look at the virtues of gratitude and empathy it is worth noticing that empathy is believed as an essential part of experiencing gratitude and that people with lowered capacities for empathy have problems in experiencing the benefits from feeling gratitude (Worthen & Isakson, 2007).
Gratitude Awakens Compassion and Wisdom.
Gratitude is one of the most powerful human emotions, because it not only enables us to appreciate what we already have, but also helps to attract new blessings into our lives.
Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.
What Is Gratitude? Gratitude is one of many positive emotions. It's about focusing on what's good in our lives and being thankful for the things we have.
Some psychologists further categorize three types of gratitude: gratitude as an “affective trait” (one's overall tendency to have a grateful disposi- tion), a mood (daily fluctuations in overall grati- tude), and an emotion (a more temporary feeling of gratitude that one may feel after receiving a gift or a favor from ...
Expressing gratitude is associated with a host of mental and physical benefits. Studies have shown that feeling thankful can improve sleep, mood and immunity. Gratitude can decrease depression, anxiety, difficulties with chronic pain and risk of disease. If a pill that could do this, everyone would be taking it.
What they found was "that gratitude causes synchronized activation in multiple brain regions, and lights up parts of the brain's reward pathways and the hypothalamus. In short, gratitude can boost neurotransmitter serotonin and activate the brain stem to produce dopamine." Dopamine is our brain's pleasure chemical.
It has been suggested that introducing these concepts can improve mental health in the workplace. It can improve productivity, reduce sick days, increase happiness and levels of well-being.
“Gratitude makes sense of your past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Appreciation ...the highest form of gratitude | Attitude of gratitude, Gratitude, Shine the light.
Being grateful can lead you to overlook red flags in relationships, and to treat yourself in ways that don't serve your highest self. If you ascribe to positive thinking and are a person who tries to make the best of everything, you could be in danger of using gratitude to gloss over things that need your attention.
It's been said that gratitude is the shortest-lived emotion. Try to get in touch with your gratitude. Be thankful for every moment of your life and enjoy the experience on a different level. How different the world appears when we deliberately focus for one moment on things we've never noticed before.
By recognizing the way others treat you, I am linking gratitude to The Golden Rule: Treat Others the Way You Wish They Would Treat You.
Being grateful does not mean denying hardships. It just means that you continue to be conscious of the positive while acknowledging that you are also facing some challenges. This positive attitude means that gratitude helps you become more resilient to life's disappointments.
When we express gratitude, our brain releases dopamine and serotonin — two hormones that make us feel lighter and happier inside.