Gratitude leads to happiness

People who wrote a list of things they were grateful for were happier overall than people who wrote lists of upsetting or neutral events.

I came across this idea in the Oct. issue of shape last night while biking to nowhere at the gym. Being a total science geek with University library access, I looked up the original article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Basically they asked people to journal either weekly or daily about A-things they were grateful for B-things that annoyed them or C-just things that happened. The participants also rated how they felt about themselves, the world and the future. The groups that wrote gratitude journals had a more positive outlook, exercised more, and rated themselves more energetic, joyful, and enthusiastic than the other groups did.

I would like to try to put this idea to my own test but I haven't quite decided how to do it. Should I write my gratitude list here? Will that be too boring for people? Maybe I should just write it in a paper journal? I'll think about it and let you know.

I guess it is just human nature or our modern training that encourages us to focus on the negative rather than the positive, on complaining rather than being grateful. How many times did people hold a door for me today? How many times did they smile? 4 or 5 at the least. And yet, if one person had been rude, I would have thought about it, I would have told all my friends, I may even have written about here or someplace else. But about the many positive experiences I had with members of the human race - nada. But if you don't stop to appreciate the good things people do, you forget, they pass right through you and don't affect you, they don't change you, they don't impress themselves in you. You don't make them yours, add them to your heart, and tenderize it. Rather, we tend to take the hurtful things and cast them in bronze to wear around our necks. To harden our heart, to encase it in brittle bitterness. How many people were loving to me today? I can't even begin to count. My husband patted my head when we were stopped at a stoplight on the way home from work, a loving, joyful caress of love. Many people smiled at me at work starting with Max, our custodian who takes such pride in his work that I feel I should thank him everyday. I had a wonderful lunch with my dear friend C. She told me so many uplifting stories about her cousins. I thought about how wonderful it is that I have had to chance to know her, how much she has enriched my life. I could write for much longer and still would not describe all the gifts that today, a completely ordinary day, brought me. But without these few minutes of thought, without writing some words, I would have missed it all. It would have evaporated into nothingness while the other events, mundane or negative remained, like the a dirty bathtub ring after a perfectly pleasant and soothing bath. I wonder if it is because these events and feelings are higher and lighter that they tend to float away if we don't make an effort to grab them and really experience them and acknowledge them.