What is the best way to practice gratitude? Magic Post

We all hear about the importance of practicing gratitude, especially this time of year. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, you’ll probably go around the table and say what you’re grateful for before enjoying your mashed potatoes. Beyond Thanksgiving, you may have heard the advice that you should write gratitude lists, keep a gratitude journal, or write heartfelt thank you letters to the important people in your life. All of these activities sound like a great idea in theory, but as a busy parent, you’re probably wondering if these practices are really worth it.

A recent study addressed this same question.

Study details

Researchers have examined the impacts of different ways of expressing gratitude, including whether expressing gratitude is more beneficial when it involves other people (such as writing a thank you letter rather than a list of gratitude) and when expressed in a short or long format (such as a list rather than a letter or essay). This study included 958 adults in Australia who were randomly assigned to one of six conditions (see also figure below):

1. Gratitude Letters (Social, Longer Format): Write gratitude letters to tell someone why you are grateful to them
2. Gratitude Essays (non-social, longer format): write essays about things you are grateful for (excluding people)
3. Social Gratitude Lists (social, shorter format): Write gratitude lists of people you are grateful for
4. Non-Social Gratitude Lists (non-social, longer format): Write lists of things you are grateful for (excluding people)
5. General Gratitude List: Write a list of things and people you are grateful for
6. Control condition: simply write about your daily activities

Participants were asked to do one of these exercises every day for a week. The researchers then examined the extent to which each of these exercises increased gratitude, improved mood, made participants feel more indebted or connected to someone else, and increased life satisfaction and satisfaction. feelings of elevation (translation: feeling of elevation). Important note: Because participants were randomly assigned, we can know that the gratitude exercises actually caused these psychological benefits.

Main findings

Here are the key takeaways from the study:

1. Doing some type of gratitude exercise is better than nothing. Completing one of these gratitude exercises resulted in greater feelings of gratitude, indebtedness, connectedness, and uplift (translation: feeling uplifted) compared to simply noting daily activities.
2. Writing about gratitude in a longer format can help you feel better. The longer writing condition (letter or essay) resulted in more gratitude, upliftment, indebtedness, positive mood, and life satisfaction than the shorter format of gratitude exercises (this is i.e. gratitude lists).
3. Writing Thank You Letters Can Have the Most Benefits. Participants who wrote thank you letters showed more positive impacts than any other condition. Participants who wrote thank you letters reported greater feelings of upliftment, positive mood, gratitude, and life satisfaction than those who wrote gratitude lists of people for whom they were grateful. They showed greater elevation, greater gratitude, and better mood compared to those who wrote gratitude lists of things they were grateful for, and higher levels of elevation than those who wrote lists of gratitude for things and people and to those who have written a gratitude essay about things they are grateful for. However, writing thank you letters also increased feelings of indebtedness to a greater extent than any other condition.
4. Gratitude lists alone may not be enough. Researchers actually found no difference between writing gratitude lists and writing daily activities. Previous research has found evidence of the benefits of gratitude lists, so more research is needed to determine whether gratitude lists are worth it. One week may not be enough to see the results of this intervention.
5. Gratitude exercises involving other people make you feel more indebted to them (like you owe them). In this study, people who engaged in social gratitude exercises showed more debt than those who engaged in non-social exercises.
6. You have to be consistent to see the positive impacts. The researchers asked participants to do these exercises every day for a week, then asked them nothing for the following week. Researchers found very little impact from gratitude exercises after a week without doing them, suggesting that you need to continue practicing gratitude regularly in order to feel the benefits.

Global translation

We all know that gratitude is important, but how exactly can we increase true feelings of gratitude and benefit from a gratitude practice? Having some sort of gratitude practice sounds nice, but we’re all short on time and it would be nice to know what gives us the best bang for our buck. This study found that writing thank you letters seems to be the most effective way to practice gratitude. A gratitude letter is more than just a letter thanking another person for a gift, but is a more open opportunity to say why you are grateful to them as a person. You don’t even have to send the letter to the person (in most research studies they don’t ask participants to send it) and you can even write it to a deceased loved one or to God or to your Higher Power. If you don’t have time to write a letter, try sending a text message or verbally expressing your gratitude to someone. You will probably feel better, as will the other person!