Summary
Practicing gratitude at work and home benefits those around you and is a “gateway drug” to better personal mental health.
November is National Gratitude Month
Increasing the amount of gratitude in our daily lives is a wonderful way to improve mental and physical health, job satisfaction, and overall happiness. National Gratitude Month reminds us that kindness can be one of the most powerful tools out there for building social bonds and achieving success, with incredible statistics to back it up.
Why is Gratitude so Powerful?
According to a vast majority of psychologists, researchers, and experts, gratitude is one of the few things that can literally change our lives for the better. There is a strong correlation between increased feelings of happiness and self-worth and giving or receiving gratitude, so much so that one is practically a function of the other. We are happy because we are grateful, not the other way around.
The power of sincere gratitude is easily underrated since it costs nothing to give and its effects can seem invisible, but any gesture of appreciation is empty without it. It doesn’t matter who you are – if everyone took a minute to express gratitude to an acquaintance or colleague, even just once per day, the positive benefits would still be enormous.
10 Amazing Gratitude Statistics
Practicing gratitude at work and home benefits those around you and is a “gateway drug” to better personal mental health. To help celebrate National Gratitude Month, Here are 10 amazing statistics to show you how:
- 70% of employees would feel better about themselves if their boss were more grateful, and 81% would work harder.
- Employees who experience more gratitude at work report fewer depressive symptoms and stress.
- 95% of employees agree that a grateful boss is more likely to be successful.
- Regular gratitude journaling has been shown to result in 5% to 15% increases in optimism and 25% increased sleep quality.
- Lack of gratitude is a major factor in driving job dissatisfaction, turnover, absenteeism, and burnout.
- 53% of employees would stay at their company longer if they felt more appreciation from their boss.
- Gratitude reduces toxic aggression, frustration, and regret even after receiving negative feedback.
- In a study of 800 descriptive trait words, “grateful” was rated in the top 4% in terms of likeability.
- Over 90% of American teens and adults indicated that expressing gratitude made them “extremely happy” or “somewhat happy”.
- A five-minute daily gratitude journal can increase long-term well-being by 10%.
A Worthy Pursuit
Sometimes it can be extra difficult to find something to be grateful about, especially after a not-so-good day (or year!). That’s why increasing the amount of gratitude in our daily lives can be so beneficial to so many arenas of life. We so often get wrapped up in the anxiety of external events that we lose sight of the things we still have to be thankful for.
