You must have heard this many times, particularly when things don’t work your way. But do you know why people tell this to you? Does it work, can u lead a happy life by being grateful? If all such questions come to your mind for even for a moment, maybe its time to get answers.

It may not be easy for anyone to be grateful for anything when there are still many things we haven’t achieved. We see people around us who have more than us, and we have to face so many problems daily. But researches have consistently proved that gratitude is related to positive energies such as happiness and contentment, good health, stable relationships, and greater resilience.

To clarify, two psychologists lead research where contestants were distributed into two teams; one was told to write about the things that they felt grateful for, the other was told to write about the things that had irritated them. After a few weeks, the first team or gratitude team was considerably more optimistic, happy and more positive in their daily lives. Are you still thinking how did it happen?

Find here the top five ways to practice gratitude and how it is beneficial for you:

Gratitude helps us making meaningful relationships

Your appreciation helps you keeping old friends close to you, and gives strengths to your relationships by realizing the importance of people in your life and how much they matter. Gratitude helps you in attracting new friends in life as thanking someone out of your contacts make you seem more approachable.

Gratitude makes you strong mentally

As amazing as it sounds, gratitude lessens the toxic feelings of frustration, envy, and all negative beliefs. Lots of scientific researches have found a bond between gratitude and human well-being. Some studies even have proved that gratitude help in increasing happiness and protects from depression. It makes you prepared to deal with hard situations and negative emotions. To practice gratitude, you can also take help of online counselling or consult a therapist.

Gratitude makes you a lot calmer

People with gratitude, usually behave more sensibly even when the people ill-treat them. According to the studies, people with higher gratitude levels, react less aggressively, when they have to handle negative feedback. Being grateful makes is easier to react to those unfavourable situations with calmness.

Grateful people have a good night sleep

Taking out only 15 minutes to jot down things you feel grateful for, before you go to bed, make you feel calm and sleep longer and better. And even help you wake up in a positive mood, more refreshed and set to go on the day.

Being grateful improves self-esteem

Studies have proved that gratitude helps in overpowering the tendency to compare ourselves to someone else. So in place of feeling envious of other people with more money and better jobs, you accept other people’s achievements and appreciate your own, by being grateful.

Gratitude doesn’t immediately improve your situation, weaknesses, and struggles, but practising it, does help us to focus on our progress with all that we already have achieved and how far we have come. By following these simple techniques to practice gratitude regularly such as writing journal before sleeping, reflecting on our approach to work, by  following meditation tracks, or online counselling, we can easily develop gratitude.