Gratitude - emotional condition that arises when you realize that someone or something has a positive effect on your life, and encourages you to do good deeds in return.

The difference between gratitude and other positive emotions is in its duration. If, for example, a state of joy is usually a few minutes, a maximum of hours, then gratitude lasts for days and months. We have a "long-acting emotional pill."

But on which organ does this “pill” work best? For centuries in the works of poets different countries It was about a grateful heart. And in recent times the first scientific data appeared on the effect of gratitude on the condition of heart patients.

To study the feeling of gratitude, Michael McCullough developed a questionnaire in 2002, which, despite its brevity, showed high reliability and reliability, confirmed by further work. I will give the text of the questionnaire in full so that you can independently assess your level.

How to work with the questionnaire: Put a number next to each statement to indicate how much you agree with the statement. We put 1 if you strongly disagree, and 7 if you are completely in favor. Accordingly, the remaining numbers between 2 and 6 will reflect the degree of agreement with the statements of the questionnaire.

1. There are many things in my life for which I am grateful.
2. If I am asked to list everything for which I am grateful, it would be a very long list.
3. When I look at the world, I don't see what I should be grateful for.
4. I am grateful to a lot of different people.
5. As I age, I find myself more able to appreciate the people, events, and situations that have become part of my life story.
6. It takes a long time before I feel grateful to someone or something.

To calculate your gratitude quotient, add the results of statements 1, 2, 4, and 5. Statements 3 and 6 are "reversed" and should be counted in reverse. That is, if you set yourself 7, 1 counts. The total amount will be in the range from 6 (“ungrateful cattle”) to 42 (“angel, but you will get wings later”).

A group of physicians at the University of California (San Diego), led by Paul Mills in 2015, worked with patients who met the criteria for a latent stage of heart failure. It turned out that patients who scored more than 35 points on the gratitude scale also later demonstrated less fatigue, slept better, had lower levels of inflammatory biomarkers, and had a greater sense of quality of life. The authors proposed the use of gratitude exercises for the complex treatment of heart failure along with traditional methods of treatment.

How to develop a sense of gratitude?

Not only possible, but necessary. As a reward, you will receive healthy optimism, life satisfaction, the ability to forgive and be forgiven, empathy, spirituality and prosocial skills. This will obviously reduce the level of depression.

1. Gratitude Journal

At the end of each day, we write down a few situations or meetings with people for which you should be grateful to fate. For the very lazy, you can take notes once a week. If it seems to you that everything in your life is hopeless and there is nothing to rejoice at, then most likely you are consciously closing your eyes to the positive opportunities and sensations that always have a place in the life of any person.

2. "Letters of thanks"

Try writing a handwritten letter of appreciation to someone who has done something nice for you. It is by hand, as it conveys the sincerity of your intention. Don't expect anything in return. Just send by mail, not email. And hurry, because life is short.

Close your eyes, relax and focus on deep breathing. Mentally imagine people, events, things for which we are grateful to life. It could be the dog that protected you from bully boys, as it was during the years of my rural childhood. Or the first car that gave you a sense of freedom and independence.

4. Gratitude Walk

It cleanses the mind and soul well. Its purpose is to feel the beauty of the world around you and realize that this is a valuable gift of fate to you and no one can take it away from you. We calmly walk through the forest, the field, along the river bank, etc. We fill ourselves with the smell of plants, the sounds of birds, the sight of flowering trees. Understand and accept that it is all yours.

5. Gratitude Collage

Take photos of all the people, creatures, things for which you are grateful to fate. Combine them into a collage and place where it will remind you of the wonderful moments of your life. There should be a new photo every week.

It is possible that fate was not favorable to you. However, if you decide to follow the “path of gratitude”, you will not be mistaken - the quality of your life will definitely increase.

Sergei Bogolepov

Photo istockphoto.com

8 Surprising Examples of How Expressing Gratitude Can Benefit Your Health

In fact, an expression of gratitude - good way improve health, which, in turn, is neglected by many. This does not require a lot of time and money, but there will be a lot of advantages.

Remembering all the reasons for gratitude in your life on Thanksgiving and other similar holidays is, of course, good, but expressing your gratitude throughout the year can significantly improve the quality of life.

Research shows that there are a number of benefits to expressing gratitude:

1. Gratitude allows you to develop relationships.

According to one 2014 study published in the scientific journal Emotion, expressing gratitude will not only improve your manners, but will also help you make new friends and influence those around you.

This study also proves that complimenting people you know helps them connect and connect with you. Thank a stranger for holding the door, or send a short message to a colleague thanking them for helping out with a project. Let those around you know that you appreciate their input, and this, in turn, will help your relationship flourish.

2. Gratitude improves physical health

Not surprisingly, people who remain grateful take better care of their health. They live longer because they exercise regularly and visit doctors.

3. Gratitude improves spiritual health

Expressing gratitude minimizes a range of toxic feelings, from resentment and envy to regret and disappointment. Robert A Emmons, Ph.D., and also a leader in research on the effects of gratitude, was able to prove its relationship with human well-being. His research proves that expressing gratitude makes a person happier and helps fight depression.

4. Gratitude Reduces Aggression and Promotes Empathy

According to a 2012 study from the University of Kentucky, grateful people are more likely to act in the interests of both sides, even if the people around them are not particularly friendly.

Study participants who expressed gratitude to a greater extent were less prone to antisocial behavior, even when their interlocutors reacted negatively. They were less likely to seek revenge and aroused more sympathy from those around them.

5. Gratitude improves your sleep.

6. Gratitude boosts your self-esteem

According to the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology, research shows that expressing gratitude has helped boost athletes' self-esteem. Additional research has shown that gratitude helps to minimize social judgment. Instead of being jealous of others because they earn more money or occupy higher positions (these are the factors that underestimate self-esteem), grateful people can find the strength to recognize the achievements of others.

7. Gratitude builds strength of mind

For many years, various studies have shown that expressing gratitude not only helps to reduce anxiety, but also to cope with trauma. According to a study published in 2006 in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy, Vietnam veterans who expressed gratitude experienced less PTSD. It is gratitude that helps a person recover faster after such traumatic events.

Remember all the reasons why you can be grateful today, because this is what helps to strengthen the strength of the spirit.

8. Gratitude makes you more patient.

Research conducted at Northeastern University shows how people who are grateful for even the smallest things are more collected and can make better decisions than those who do not express their gratitude regularly.

Each of us can learn to be grateful. Take just a few minutes to focus on the things you are grateful for instead of complaining about what you don't have. Showing gratitude is one of the most simple ways become happier.

Article translation - 10 Surprising Benefits Of Gratitude On Your Health

Many studies over the past 10 years point to the benefits of gratitude: when people consciously remember the good things in their lives, they become happier. But we could not rely on the results of the experiments - most of them were carried out on well-off people. We decided to find out if gratitude helps people with psychological problems.

Our study involved 300 people, most of them were students who faced psychological problems and signed up for psychotherapy sessions. Our experiment started before the start of their therapy sessions: many of the participants suffered from a depressive or anxiety disorder and, on average, had poor psychological health scores.

We randomly divided people into three groups, the participants of each of them went to sessions with a psychotherapist. The difference was in the extra task. Participants in the first group wrote a letter of thanks to someone once a week. Participants of the second described their thoughts and feelings caused by unpleasant situations in their lives. Members of the third group did not write anything. The experiment lasted three weeks.

A few weeks after the end of the experiment, we assessed the psychological health of the participants. In the first group, it improved significantly, in the other two there were no changes. This means that gratitude helps not only healthy people, but also those who are struggling with psychological problems. We carefully analyzed the research data to understand how gratitude affects the brain and body.

Gratitude saves from destructive emotions

We compared the proportion of words with positive and negative emotional evaluation, which were used in the texts of the participants of the two writing groups. The participants who wrote the thank you letters used more positive words and fewer negative words compared to the second group. However, positive words do not guarantee mental well-being. Only those people who used fewer negative words subsequently improved their condition. The absence of negative statements led to a difference in state of mind between the two groups.

A thank you letter shifts attention away from negative emotions like resentment and envy. When you write about how grateful you are for others and how much good people have brought to life, it's hard to get stuck thinking about bad things.

Gratitude helps, even if it is kept secret.

We told the participants who wrote the thank you letters that it was not necessary to send the letters to the recipients. Only 23% of participants actually sent letters. But all the other members of the group also corrected their condition, although the letters remained with them. So the actual transmission of gratitude does not play a key role.

Let’s say you want to write a thank you letter to someone but don’t dare. Write it anyway. Then decide whether to send or not. The act of writing a letter in itself will help you appreciate the people in your life and shift your focus away from negative thoughts and feelings.

The positive effects of thank you letters don't happen overnight. In our study, it accumulated over time. A week after the end of the writing practices, we did not notice a difference in the state of mind between the participants in the three groups.

However, four weeks later, the first group, who wrote thank you letters, showed an improvement over the other two groups. 12 weeks after the end of the experiment, the difference became even more noticeable.

In many other similar studies, the positive effect declined over time. In our case, the opposite happened. Perhaps the participants discussed their letters. These discussions reinforced the psychological effects of letter writing.

If you are writing a thank you letter, don't expect immediate improvement. Be patient. Gratitude takes time to work.

Practicing gratitude improves health

Three months after the start of the psychotherapy session, we compared several people who wrote thank you letters with those who did not write anything. We wanted to know if their brains were processing information differently.

To do this, they were asked to complete the “pay it to another” exercise, and in the process they used a CT scanner to assess the brain activity of the participants. During the exercise, the "benefactor" gives each participant a small amount of money and asks them to pass it on to another person if they feel grateful. Participants then decide whether to donate the money to a good cause and determine the amount.

We wanted to separate donations motivated by gratitude from donations based on other feelings, such as debt or guilt. To do this, participants were asked to indicate how grateful they are to the “benefactor”, how much they want to participate in charity, and how guilty they feel if they do not. Participants also completed questionnaires that measured how grateful they are overall in life.

People who were generally more grateful gave more money to a good cause and showed higher neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, an area responsible for learning and decision making. It can be assumed that more grateful people care more about exactly how to express their gratitude.

Constant practice trains the brain, and it becomes more sensitive to the experience of gratitude in the future.

We also compared the brain activity of participants who wrote thank you letters with those of those who did not, and noticed a difference. Those who wrote thank you letters showed more marked activity in the medial prefrontal cortex.

We found this effect three months after the start of the experiment. This means that the expression of gratitude has a long-term effect: constant practice trains the brain, and it becomes more sensitive to the experience of gratitude in the future. In the long run, this improves mental health.

It doesn't matter if it's standing in front of you now psychological problem try writing a thank you letter. We spend most of our time and energy chasing what we don't have. Gratitude helps us appreciate the people around us and the things we already have.

About authors

Joshua Brown(Joshua Brown) is a psychologist at Indiana University.

Joel Wong(Joel Wong) is a psychologist at Indiana University.

“Gratitude is the magic potion for all ailments. It is the most fast way to disperse anxiety, get rid of disappointment and change the negative attitude into a positive one. When gratitude takes the place of value judgments, peace embraces your body, kindness embraces your soul, and wisdom fills your mind.

Neil Donald Walsh

Feeling gratitude is an easy way to switch from the victim consciousness, get out of the gap, expand your consciousness and raise your vibrations. This is help in forgiveness, acceptance of yourself and the situation.

How often do you experience this feeling, consciously apply the practice of gratitude?

With this article, I want to remind you that you always have this versatile and affordable tool at hand.

Activation of Unconditional Love through the chakras

These short meditations will help you activate Unconditional Self-Love in every chakra of your physical body.

Although they are neglected by many.

Don't look for complicated solutions right moment remember gratitude. Read on for its benefits.

7 Benefits of Gratitude

1. Gratitude teaches you to appreciate what you have.

If a person lacks something, he often asks the higher powers to help him get it.

Thus increasing the scarcity in your life.

Try to act differently. When you catch yourself thinking that you are complaining that you don’t have something, you weren’t given enough, stop and think about how often YOU thank for what you receive.

Are you discounting the gifts that the universe is giving you?

Try to find what can you thank life for. Focus not on what you don't have, but on what you already have.

You have eyes and you can see - give thanks for that. After all, there are people who are not given this from birth.

You have housing, food. And thousands of people on the planet have no roof over their heads, they are starving.

You have life - you are alive. Isn't that a reason to be grateful?

Wallet stolen? Instead of regretting the last money, be grateful that you came out unscathed. Money can be earned, but health is much more difficult to restore.

The human mind is designed in such a way that people accept the benefits by default - as they should be, and focus on what is not.

Feel dissatisfied if something is taken away. As in the proverb: "Having - we do not store, having lost - we cry."

Train yourself to appreciate what you have. Use for this.

Play the game that the heroine of the movie "Polyanna" played. The meaning of the game was to find something good and useful for yourself in trouble.

2. Gratitude helps you get out of failure.

If you feel that you have failed, a quick and affordable way to return to a resourceful state is focus on gratitude.

When you choose gratitude at the moment of failure, it’s like a switch goes off inside of you. It's like you're transported to another reality.

Just a minute ago, you saw only black, white and gray, and with a sense of gratitude, a much larger spectrum of colors becomes available to your eyes.

It is more difficult at this moment to find something for which you can thank.

3. Gratitude promotes healing

By switching to the vibration of gratitude, you heal the body and soul. This emotion vibrates at a high frequency, second only to love and peace.

By radiating it, you gradually rewrite your personal vibration and heal your physical body.

Any illness is a signal that a person is doing something wrong in life. Thank your body for the pain, even if you can't figure out why. The answer will surely come.

Gratitude heals the heart chakra. This is useful for those who have it blocked. As you radiate gratitude, you gradually melt the ice in your heart and allow yourself to experience feelings.

4. Feeling Gratitude Helps You Forgive and Accept

Allowing yourself to thank the offenders, you are freed from the anger and resentment that fettered you for a long time. Gratitude Helps feel true forgiveness acceptance of the situation and release from destructive emotions.

This needs to be decided. Because you become vulnerable. But the one who chooses gratitude never loses.

When you choose to see the true meaning of an unfavorable situation, you move from being a victim to being a creator.

In other words, you expand your consciousness, and what you have not seen before becomes available to you.

You gain the understanding that you have nothing to forgive for, because you have already found the answer. You can only thank and treat the situation and the people who participated in it with understanding and acceptance.

Read the article which details what true forgiveness is and how to achieve it.

5. Gratitude allows you to see the soul of a person, dissolves hatred

When you choose not to judge a person and open up to the true meaning and lesson they taught you, you become strong and able to radiate gratitude for the experience you have had.

Gratitude is the key to see the soul in another person to look at what happened from a different angle. You already see not the culprit and the offended, but the learning process in which each of you gains valuable experience.

When you are able to thank a person for a lesson, you enter a completely new path, and you can see new horizons that were not available to you without it.

Gratitude Disarms the Opponent. His manipulations against you stop working. You see his true essence, but look at him already without hatred, but with a sense of compassion.

6. Feeling grateful helps you love yourself.

Thank not only life, relatives and teachers, but also yourself. For mistakes - without them you would not have gained certain experience, you would not have learned something new.

For achievements - this is how you learn to value and respect yourself. Gratitude helps you accept yourself. You learn to forgive yourself and take good care of yourself.

7. Gratitude opens the way to unconditional love.

Not everyone is able to love unconditionally, but to experience gratitude is available to everyone.

If you wholeheartedly desire to experience unconditional love, but until it works, practice thanksgiving as often as possible.

You will gradually rewrite your vibrations to higher ones and open your heart to love.

All the benefits of gratitude cannot be listed. I have given only a few arguments that show its power and transformative properties.

By Gregg Braden DNA Self-Healing Research
Gregg Braden. The wisdom of the ancestors

Gregg Braden reports astonishing information about three DNA experiments that prove that the DNA molecule can be healed with the help of a person's "feelings".

In his recently developed program Healing Hearts - Healing Nations: The Science of Peace and the Power of Prayer, Gregg Braden says that in the past we have lost a large number of information about ancient spiritual traditions: at least 523,000 documents were lost after the fire in the Library of Alexandria. But perhaps there is information relating to those ancient teachings that could help us understand some of the secrets of science. Gregg Braden, a scientist and engineer, reports three very interesting experiments.

EXPERIMENT #1

This experiment was carried out by Dr. Vladimir Poponin, a quantum biologist. First, a vacuum was created in a certain container, where the only material objects were present - photons (light particles). The location of the photons was measured and found to be extremely randomly distributed. This was the expected result. Then a part of the DNA was placed in the container, and again the distribution of photons was measured.

This time, the photons lined up in a certain order, oriented towards the DNA. In other words, organic DNA had an impact on particles of inanimate nature. After that, the DNA was removed from the container and the photons were measured again. The photons remained in the same order and oriented in the same direction as the DNA. What were the particles of light connected to? What held the photons together? Gregg Braden says that we are forced to recognize the possibility of some new energy field, energy system, and that DNA exchanged information with photons through this energy.

EXPERIMENT #2

This experiment was carried out by the military. White blood cells from DNA were taken from donors and placed in special chambers to measure electrical charges. During the experiment, the donor was placed in a separate room and subjected to "stimulation" with the help of video clips that evoked various emotions in a person. The DNA was in another room in the same building. The donor and the DNA were monitored.
As the donor "gave out" peaks of emotion, measured electrical impulses, the DNA responded with identical electrical impulses at the same time.
There was no delay time, no signal transmission time. The peaks and troughs of the DNA pulses exactly coincided in time with the peaks and troughs of the donor's pulses. The military wanted to know how far they could distance a donor from their DNA and still get the same result. They stopped research after the distance between the donor and his DNA was 50 miles,
and the result of the experiment was still the same: there was no delay time, no signal transmission time. DNA and its donor showed identical reactions at the same time. What does this mean?
Gregg Braden says living cells communicate through a previously unrecognized form of energy. This type of energy is not affected by time or distance. It is not a local form of energy, it is an energy that exists everywhere and at any time.

EXPERIMENT #3

The third experiment was conducted by the Institute of Heart Mathematics and the report written about this experiment is titled "Local and Non-Local Effects of Coherent Heart Frequencies on Conformational Changes in DNA". (Ignore the title! The information itself is amazing!) This experiment has a lot to do with anthrax. Several placental DNA (the most ancient form of DNA) were placed in a container in which its changes could be measured. Trained participants in the experiment, each of whom was capable of experiencing strong emotions, were given 28 vials of this DNA. All participants in the experiment were instructed how to reproduce and experience the "necessary" feelings. It was found that, depending on the feelings of the researchers, DNA CHANGED ITS SHAPE. When researchers FELT gratitude, love, and appreciation, DNA VOLTAGE DECREASED, and the helix straightened and became longer. It was getting shorter and TURNING OFF many of our DNA codes! If you've ever felt "switched off" by negative emotions, now you understand why your body was "switched off" in the same way. The DNA codes turned on when the participants again experienced feelings of love, joy, gratitude, and admiration. Later this experiment was carried out with HIV-positive patients. It has been found that experiencing feelings of love, gratitude, and admiration increased the body's RESISTANCE by 300,000 times .

Here is located the answer that will help you always feel good, no matter what terrible virus or bacteria is around you. Stay in a state of joy, love and admiration! These emotional changes go far beyond known electromagnetic phenomena. People who know how to experience feelings of deep love are able to change the shape of their DNA. Gregg Braden says this illustrates the recognition of a new form of energy that binds all of creation. This energy seems to be a TIGHTLY WOVEN NETWORK connecting everything material. As such, we are able to influence this web of creation through our VIBRATIONS.

CONCLUSIONS:
What do these experiments have in common with the current situation? Behind all of this is the science that determines how we can choose right time to stay safe, no matter what's going on around you. As Gregg Braden explains in The Isaiah Effect, time is not only linear (past, present and future), it also has depth. The depth of time consists of all possible prayers that could ever be and have been offered. In fact, all our prayers have been answered. We only activate one of them, experiencing it with our FEELINGS. THAT'S HOW we create our reality - we choose it with our feelings. Our senses activate the time slot through the web of creation that links all energy and matter in the universe.
Remember the universal law that we attract to ourselves what we focus our attention on? If you focus on fear, you are sending a signal to the universe to give you what you fear. But if you tune in to feelings of joy, love, gratitude, or admiration, and focus on bringing even more of these qualities into your life, then you can automatically avoid anything negative. You will choose a different TIME INTERVAL with your feelings.
You can prevent anthrax or the flu, other viral and other diseases, if you strive to experience only positive feelings that can keep your immune system at an incredibly high level. Thus, you get protection from anything: find something that will delight you every day, or hour, or just a few minutes in
day. This is the easiest and most best protection which you may have. And if nothing is “found”, then be content that the Universe has already caught all the criminals!