Mental Health Exercise

Did you know that writing down 5 things you’re grateful for everyday can have significant beneficial affects on your health? It’s true!

The science is pretty solid, being grateful for the good things in your life — even the tiny ones — may be a way to train your brain to develop better habits and create a healthier future. It doesn’t do ALL the work for you, but it certainly seems like a good start. With that in mind, here are 5 brain changes that may result if you regularly practice gratitude:

1) Your Brain Floods with Reward Chemicals: Gratitude floods your brain with positive chemicals of a unique kind. Try focusing on a specific person, such as thanking someone for their behavior towards you. Your brain’s response to gratitude is to activate your reward center, one specifically targeted at boosting our bonds with other people.

2) Your Anxiety & Depression Symptoms May Lessen: Gratitude can help improve sleep, which can help reduce symptoms of anxiety. It also reduces negative thought patterns, which can be a core component of serious depression.

3) Your Hypothalamus Works Better: That means gratitude can impact the part of your brain that controls your metabolism, hunger and other natural bodily functions. When your hypothalamus works well, you avoid the hormonal highs and lows, which lead to binging on sugar and other less healthful foods.

4) You’re More Resistant to Stress: It impacts your body and brain’s ability to bounce back from seriously stressful events, like trauma, grief, or job loss. Studies show that people who are grateful recover more quickly from stressful situations.

5) You Fall Asleep More Easily: Grateful people fall asleep more easily, possibly because of the effects of stress reduction and better limbic system function (part of brain controlling instinct and mood).

Practicing gratitude doesn’t take much and the benefits are great. We’ll go first….