You will be not only polite but also healthy. When listing the components of a healthy lifestyle, we mention many things; brushing your teeth in the morning and evening, eating right, playing sports, etc. Few people think that moral ones are also important, along with physical components.
Even an ordinary thank you, which takes much less time and effort than, for example, training, can affect your well-being.
Read also: 10 Habits That Keep You From Being Happy
What being thankful does to you
1. Helps build relationships
Gratitude plays a key role in building and maintaining relationships with others. On your fingers, the more often you thank, the more attractive you look in the eyes of other people. You are trusted more, considered more intelligent, generous, and negotiable. And this opens up excellent prospects both in personal and business life because the listed qualities are important in a long-term partnership.
2. Adds optimism
When you say thank you, you are not doing it in void. Chances are, your gratitude has a reason. And you noticed this reason, isolated it from other events, and now you mark it with words. From a psychological point of view, this way, you get used to focusing on positive things. And this is the basis of psychological well-being. Anyone who has learned to see the good in life perceives the world in a more positive way than other people. This is called optimism.
3. Makes you less aggressive
Gratitude is the antidote to being overly aggressive. If emotions boil daily with or without reason, train yourself to thank people as often as possible. You won't recognize it in yourself, but you'll begin to understand others better. And where there is empathy, aggression becomes less.
4. Improves sleep
Give thanks more often - sleep better. You also fall asleep easier and get better sleep. Researchers suggest that a person who knows how to thank receives many positive emotions during the day, thanks to which he becomes more balanced. And calmness is exactly what is needed for healthy sleep.
By the way, to receive such a "lullaby," it is not necessary to communicate with people all day and look for reasons for gratitude. You can do otherwise. Make it a habit to list 4-5 events of the day for which you are grateful every night before bed. It can be a smile of a randomly met baby, addressed to you. Or rain after the sweltering heat. Generally, use the phrase: "I want to say thank you for ...".
5. Reduces the risk of overeating
The ability to give thanks is closely related to patience, including the ability not to succumb to food temptations. This is the conclusion reached by the American psychologist Susan Peirce Thompson, an eating disorders specialist.
In his book Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin & Free, the expert recommends the following; if you find yourself at an event that serves food that is too high in calories for you or finds yourself in a situation where the body urgently requires a cake that you cannot, stop and thank.
It makes no difference who or what; the acquaintance who invited you to the party, the waiter who brought the menu, or just life that threw you into this amazingly pleasant place.
Thank you will help you shift your focus from what you want (and even a cake) to what you already have. This will make your food choices more informed.
6. Increases self-esteem
Wanting to grow a confident person out of a child who knows his own worth, it is important to admire his achievements and teach him to thank. Saying thank you, children learn to focus on the positive traits of others, to appreciate others. And then the mechanism of the psychological transfer comes into play's own attitude to people on themselves: "If those who surround me are valuable, then I am also valuable."
Also read: 10 Things To Let Go Of To Be Happy
7. May improve the condition in case of illness
Thanksgiving and associated psychological well-being is an effective way to improve the condition in type 2 diabetes. Ephemeral (at first glance) gratitude expressed to others can actually reduce blood sugar levels.
The same applies to cardiovascular and other diseases. So saying thank you will help you be healthier.
How to learn to say thank you
The ability to say thank you is quite amenable to training (and, on the contrary, wasted away without regular exercise). Here's what they recommend researchers from Harvard Medical School.
- Get in the habit of writing thank-you notes—at least once a month. Pick a person who has played a role in your life and write to him how important he is to you, what impact he has and how grateful you are to him for it. And, of course, send the message to the addressee in a convenient way. Write the same letter for yourself from time to time. Your actions are also sometimes worthy of gratitude, right?
- Thank people mentally. Don't have time to write? Just think of someone who helped you or did something nice, imagine his face and say thank you.
- Keep a gratitude journal. Every evening, share in it those meetings, situations, words for which you are grateful. Be diligent: have at least 2-3 new entries in your journal every day. Be sure to explain what emotions and feelings caused you by what you want to thank you for.
- Meditate. Take a couple of minutes each day to focus on the present. Close your eyes, feel your heart beating, listen to your breathing. This is a good way to experience how beautiful and precious life is. Exhale and thank the world for having it.
Adapted and translated by The Cop Cart Staff
Sources: Life hacker
