World Gratitude day is Wednesday, September 21st, and to celebrate we are sharing about the benefits of practicing gratitude, and different exercises that you can include to make gratitude part of your daily schedule.
Research shows that practicing gratitude regularly has benefits to our overall health and well-being. Practicing gratitude can mean different things to different people. It used to be called stopping to smell the roses, but can be known simply as noticing the joy in small moments. This post will share with you 5 simple ways you can include gratitude in your daily routine.
An Attitude of Gratitude
Gratitude is defined as the state of being grateful. It involves the recognition of the positive things in our life and how they affect us. Practicing gratitude can be as simple as acknowledging a beautiful flower you walk by or the feeling of thanks when you receive a generous and unexpected gift.
Including gratitude in our daily routine can bring along with it lots of rewarding benefits both physical and emotional such as reducing stress, increasing optimism and changing our brain. Let’s learn more about the benefits of gratitude and how it can improve overall health and well-being.
“Give Thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:18
Benefits of Expressing Gratitude
Since it’s been proven that recognizing all that you’re thankful for, even during times of extreme stress, helps to foster mental and emotional resilience, improve self-esteem and boost empathy. Other benefits of gratitude include:
- Improve your health
- Enrich your experience of life
- Increase your happiness and well being
- Make you more resilient to life’s hassles and stress
- Encourage your satisfaction with life
- Increase your compassion
- Increase your energy and optimism
- Shift your focus to what has gone well or delighted you
- Help you not take things for granted
It’s not always easy but being grateful for the positives in life can have a profound impact on our overall health and wellbeing. If you’re looking to start practicing gratitude regularly, there are plenty of useful exercises to help you integrate it into your daily life.
5 Simple Ways to Add Gratitude to Your Daily Routine
- Prayer – Prayer is a great way to express gratitude to God and invoke a feeling of appreciation. Praying is a great way to show gratitude either before meals or at the end of the day. It is a chance to deepen our faith, marvel at the miracle of existence and simply give thanks for being alive. Share in prayer with our community, here!
- Gratitude Journals – This technique involves keeping a journal of things you are grateful for every day. This could be something as simple as a favorite moment of the day, describing a special person in our life or making a list of 5 things you are grateful for that day. Checkout our 30-days of gratitude initiative!
- Gratitude Jar – This simple idea is easy to put into practice. Whenever something good happens or you feel thankful write it down and put it in the jar. The next time you are needing some positivity you can shake the jar and pull out a piece of paper to read. This allows us to be reminded of our blessings. Checkout the UHSM Wall of Gratitude! It’s like a jar, only, online!
- Gratitude Email/Letter/Visit – There are many different ways we can show gratitude to those around us. An email, letter or visit are simple ways to express deep gratitude to someone who has made a big difference in our life.
- Volunteering – Helping others through volunteering is a great way to give back to others less fortunate as well as develop a sense of understanding, appreciation and thankfulness for what we have. Checkout our community partners making a difference through volunteering!
Mind Body and Spiritual Connection for Health and Wellbeing
UHSM continues to promote the trinity of health: The Mind Body Spiritual connection. Here are some great tips for how to keep your mind body and spirit healthy.
In addition to ongoing wellness education and tips for our community, Unite Health Share Ministries also offers mind body and spiritual perks for its members with these free memberships:
- Noom – Noom is a company dedicated to creating a healthier world. They are committed to helping their users achieve physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
- Fitbod – Fitbod is an award-winning application that leverages AI to provide users with personalized workouts tailored to their goal, ability, and available equipment
- com – Pray.com is the world’s #1 app for daily prayer and faith-based audio content. Experience stronger faith, deeper sleep, and a better prayer life when you download the Pray.com app.
If you’re wanting to include mindfulness and gratitude into your daily routine the book Worthy by Mental Health Advocate and USHM Ambassador Brittney Moses is a great addition to your emotional wellness toolkit. You can find more about the book here.
Stay tuned for future posts where we continue to share tips and information on how to live happier and healthier in mind body and spirit. You can also catch up on any posts you might have missed here.
