As the year comes to a close, this can be the perfect opportunity for us to cultivate the habit of being grateful. We can turn it into the season of giving and showing gratefulness to everyone and everything we receive throughout the year. But being grateful is more than just a December thing and a year-end reflection.
As we define the word grateful, it is warmly or being deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received in short, being thankful beyond measures. It is grateful also includes acknowledging positive things in your life and how they affect you as a person.
With all the things that happened to us since the pandemic began, day by day, we learn to be more grateful to things that we used to be taken for granted. We learn that what we have is already more than enough, which is something to be thankful for. As we look back, what do we benefit from being grateful, especially when we experience challenges?
Surprisingly, this attitude has a lot of positive things in store for us to a great extent that we can make it a habit.
Boost immune system
Being grateful is a great contributor to our overall well-being. It is said that writing down things for which we are grateful will help us sleep better and longer. Contemporary research has evidence to prove that a grateful outlook on life can boost our immune systems, decrease low-grade depression, and enhance our energy quotients.
Improves mental health
Showing gratitude reveals that it lessens stress, helps us overcome trauma, and contributes to resilience. It allows people to find things for which they are grateful despite the different silent battles that needed to face to go on in life will foster resiliency. Also, gratefulness lessens our negative emotions, such as toxicity, envy, resentment, frustration, and even regrets.
Improved relationships
Regularly saying thank you will reflect good manners. It is easier to create and maintain a healthy relationship with people around you if they can see how appreciative you are of everything given to you – even on small things offered to you.
Increased optimism
Optimism is an attitude of hopefulness and confidence about our future. Being optimistic and grateful is correlated inhabiting gratefulness will naturally lead you to be confident in life – it is not a secret to us that having an optimistic outlook in life will lead to plenty of health benefits.
We are all equally allowed to cultivate gratitude. Applying gratefulness can be beneficial as we impart it to our daily habits. Being grateful is one of the simplest forms to improve our life satisfaction.
As we turn another page of our lives at the upcoming end of this year, let us all look back, write down, and be grateful for everything we experienced this year. May it be a good or bad memory; these things contribute to who we are as of the moment. Positive or negative experiences, let us be grateful for all our lessons. May the odds be in our favour in this upcoming year, and this time let us make sure that gratefulness is already our habit.
Dina Relojo is the social media manager of Psychreg. She is a high school teacher from the Philippines.
