Authors claim feeling gratitude leads to happier life

The Post Tribune

Authors claim feeling gratitude leads to happier life(http://www.post-trib.com/news/1302147,thanksside.article)

November 27, 2008
By Mark Taylor Post-Tribune correspondent

The Pilgrims were right about something besides turkey.
While their fashion sense can be debated, they knew enough about human and divine nature to appreciate the salubrious effects of thankfulness, that the act of expressing and feeling gratitude feels good as much as it does good.

The Pilgrims established Thanksgiving as a holiday for the colony in 1621. It took another 168 years for George Washington to declare it a legal national holiday and Abe Lincoln to set aside the last Thursday in November as the date for Thanksgiving.
Two recent books confirm what millions have suspected and world religions and philosophers have promulgated for centuries: the importance of being grateful, of counting our blessings.
"The Psychology of Gratitude" and "Thanks: How The New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier," explore the mental and physical health benefits of being grateful on the well-being of thankful people.

While it sounds like more pop psychology, in the studies conducted by researchers at the University of California at Davis and University of Miami, among others, thankful people report higher levels of positive emotions and life satisfaction, stronger sense of empathy with others and deeper spirituality.

The studies find that while gratitude does not require religious faith, that faith "enhances the ability to be grateful." The authors also found that grateful people are less materialistic, more generous and less envious of others.

One author, Robert Emmons, editor-in-chief of the "Journal of Positive Psychology," wrote that gratitude is the "forgotten factor" in happiness research.
He discovered a link between the complex emotion and improved healing. Emmons describes gratefulness as "a knowing awareness that we are the recipients of goodness ...We cannot be grateful without being thoughtful," he wrote. "Gratitude requires contemplation and reflection."




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