ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ ॥ ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ ॥
– Nanak Naam Chardikala, teraa bhanaa Sarbaht dah Phahla“
Best one word prayer is ‘Thankyou’.
Gratitude is all about recognizing and appreciating those people, things, moments, skills, or gifts that bring joy, peace, or comfort into our lives.
“In general terms, gratitude stems from the recognition that something good happened to you, accompanied by an appraisal that someone, whether another individual or an impersonal source, such as nature or a divine entity, was responsible for it,” explain researchers Lúzie Fofonka Cunha, Lucia Campos Pellanda, and Caroline Tozzi Reppold in a 2019 article published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Impact of Gratitude
Practicing gratitude can have a significant impact on physical and psychological health.
Some of the benefits of gratitude that researchers have uncovered include:
- Higher self-esteem
- Stronger relationships
- Higher levels of optimism
- Decreased stress
- Lower blood pressure
- Less anxiety and depression
- Better sleep
- Better immunity
Physical
- Stronger immune systems
- Less bothered by aches and pains
- Lower blood pressure
- Exercise more and take better care of their health
- Sleep longer and feel more refreshed upon waking
Psychological
- Higher levels of positive emotions
- More alert, alive, and awake
- More joy and pleasure
- More optimism and happiness
Social
- More helpful, generous, and compassionate
- More forgiving
- More outgoing
- Feel less lonely and isolated.
The social benefits are especially significant here because, after all, gratitude is a social emotion. I see it as a relationship-strengthening emotion because it requires us to see how we’ve been supported and affirmed by other people. Research also suggests that people who need to be more grateful are also more more likely to engage in behaviors that promote community building and well-being.
According to psychologist Robert Emmons, gratitude can have a transformative effect on people’s lives for several reasons.
Because it helps people focus on the present, it plays a role in magnifying positive emotions.
He also suggests that it can help improve people’s self-worth. When you acknowledge that there are people in the world who care about you and are looking out for your interests, it can help you recognize your value.
What Is Gratitude?
Robert Emmons, perhaps the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude, argues that gratitude has two key components, which he describes in a Greater Good essay, “Why Gratitude Is Good.”
“First,” he writes, “it’s an affirmation of goodness.
We affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we’ve received.”
In the second part of gratitude, he explains, “we recognize that the sources of this goodness are outside of ourselves. … We acknowledge that other people-or even higher powers, if you’re of a spiritual mindset-gave us many gifts, big and small, to help us achieve the goodness in our lives.”
Emmons and other researchers see the social dimension as being especially important to gratitude.
“I see it as a relationship-strengthening emotion,“ writes Emmons, “because it requires us to see how we’ve been supported and affirmed by other people.”
Because gratitude encourages us not only to appreciate gifts but to repay them, the sociologist Georg Simmel called it “the moral memory of mankind.” This is how gratitude may have evolved: by strengthening bonds between members of the same species who mutually helped each other out.