Being Thankful Might Be as Important as Eating Your Veggies This Thanksgiving

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On the eve of everyone getting ready to fill their plates with turkey and all the trimmings it is good to have a reminder of what Thanksgiving stands for. Of course many of us have already been reminded by the “28 days of thankfulness” circulating on social networks or the school projects children bring home. One thing you might not know about gratitude is that it can have health benefits. That’s right, something that is totally free, doesn't require you to cut down on your pumpkin pie intake, or get on a treadmill this holiday season has health benefits.

Research has shown that gratitude, or being thankful can have mental and physical health benefits.  (Emmons & McCullough, 2003) Those who practice being thankful have been shown to:

• Practice better self-care
• Have better quality of sleep
• Exercise and eat healthy more
• Be more alert
• Practice more proactive health behaviors
• Cope with stress
• Have stronger immunity
• Be more optimistic 

Most of us know how to say “thank you”, but how do we adopt it as a practice? There are several ways including:

• Focus on what you do have instead of what you don’t. We all could make long lists of the things we wish we did have; a better job, a bigger house, or those new tennis shoes. Focusing on the things we do have like our health, a place to live, loved ones, etc. helps us to be grateful.
• Make a list of the things you are thankful for. Our elementary school teachers were doing even more than they thought with this assignment.  Keeping notes, sending thank you notes,  journaling about what you are thankful for, or just making a list of the things you are thankful for can be a good reminder of what we are thankful for.
• Try to notice negativity and re-frame it in a positive way. Any situation can be seen from many viewpoints. For example, let’s say Jane is driving to work today and gets in a fender bender. She could be very negative and focus on feeling awful that she got into an accident or she could focus on the fact that no one was hurt. Trying to catch your automatic tendency to evaluate things negatively and replacing it with something positive can help you to notice things that you are grateful for.
• Try to be thankful for even the things that are difficult in your life. This one is a tricky one, but often there are lessons to be learned in even the difficult and painful things. If we pull a muscle running too much our body might be telling us to slow down. If a relationship ends it may have been unhealthy. A friend of mine often asks, "what information did that give you?" Sometimes it takes time and a step back to see the reasons to be thankful but often they are hidden in the most unlikely of places. What would it be like if we were thankful for everything?  

The important thing is to sustain your gratitude and make it a way of life rather than a once a year occasion. Recently, in celebration of the month of November a colleague shared a list of quotes about thankfulness with me and one quote by Sarah Ban Breathnach stuck with me “Real life isn’t always going to be perfect or go your way, but the recurring acknowledgement of what is working in our lives can help us not only to survive but to surmount our difficulties.”

Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: Experimental studies of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 377–389.

A special thank you to Vanessa Shileny, MSW for sharing her thankfulness resources.