spa lifestyle
Choosing to be Grateful creates Happiness The anti-ageing life philosophy of being happy is the opportunity to extend the general lifespan and impact the number of years lived in optimal health. Our desire to stay young, beautiful and energetic is as natural as the process of ageing itself. Ageing well includes an individual's mental, physical and spiritual well-being. Choosing to focus on good things makes you feel better than focusing on bad. The act of gratitude is the act of focusing on the good in life. If we perceive our current life to be good, we will also believe our future life to be good. Optimism is correlated with gratitude because those with an optimistic disposition are biologically more likely to focus on the good than on the bad. Those who engage in gratitude practices have been shown to feel less pain, go to the doctor less often, have lower blood pressure, and be less likely to develop a mental disorder. Gratitude and vitality are strongly correlated - the grateful are much more likely to report physical and mental vigour. To bring some changes in life it would be good to become aware of yourself: What is going on in your mind and spiritual health; what physical condition your body is in and what could be the best training options for your personality. In addition to building our own happiness, choosing gratitude can bring out the best in those around us.
Research: A 2014 article in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience identified a variation in a gene (CD38) associated with gratitude. Some people simply have a heightened genetic tendency to experience “global relationship satisfaction, perceived partner responsiveness and positive emotions (particularly love)”. Researchers in a study randomly assigned one group of study participants to keep a short weekly list of the things they were grateful for, while other groups listed hassles or neutral events. Ten weeks later, the first group enjoyed significantly greater life satisfaction than the others. Other studies have shown the same pattern and lead to the same conclusion.
How does this work? One explanation is that acting happy, regardless of feelings, coaxes one's brain into processing positive emotions. In one experiment, researchers asked human subjects to smile forcibly for 20 seconds while tensing facial muscles, notably the muscles around the eyes called the orbicularis oculi (which create “crow's feet”). They found that this action stimulated brain activity associated with positive emotions. Gratitude reduces levels of stress by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Stress in turn has been shown to disrupt healthy body functioning (e.g disrupting the hypothalamic-pituitary axis, the immune system, our sleep, etc.). Gratitude improves psychological health and thereby reduces a multitude of negative emotions, ranging from envy and resentment to frustration and regret. Research confirms that gratitude effectively increases happiness and reduces depression.
Benefits of Gratitude: The successful ageing concepts teach us that the achievement of mental and emotional well-being is a prerequisite to leading a healthy life. Those that have more gratitude have a more pro-active coping style, are more likely to have social support in times of need. Gratitude increases sleep quality, reduces the time required to fall asleep, and increases sleep duration. Gratitude makes us nicer, more trusting, more social, and more appreciative. As a result, it helps us make more friends and deepen our existing relationships. Gratitude boosts our career. It makes you a more effective manager, helps you network, increases your decision making capabilities, increases your productivity. Gratitude strengthens our emotions - it reduces feelings of envy, makes our memories happier, lets us experience good feelings, and helps us bounce back from stress. Gratitude increases spiritualism. Spiritual
transcendence is highly correlated with feelings of gratitude. The more spiritual you are, the more likely you are to be grateful. Gratitude makes us less self-centred. This is because the very nature of gratitude is to focus on others acts of kindness. Gratitude increase your energy levels, physical and mental vigour. Gratitude makes our memories happier. Experiencing gratitude makes us more likely to remember positive memories, and actually transforms some of our neutral or even negative memories into positive. Gratitude helps you network. As gratitude has been shown to increase self-esteem and reduce insecurity, this means that it can help us focus and improve our productivity
There are strategies that we can adopt. First, start with “interior gratitude,” the practice of giving thanks privately. Next, move to “exterior gratitude,” which focuses on public expression. The psychologist Martin Seligman, father of the field known as “positive psychology,” gives some practical suggestions on how to do this. In his best seller “Authentic Happiness,” he recommends that readers systematically express gratitude in letters to loved ones and colleagues. A disciplined way to put this into practice is to make it as routine as morning coffee. Write two short emails each morning to friends, family or colleagues, thanking them for what they do. Finally, be grateful for useless things. It is relatively easy to be thankful for the most important and obvious parts of life - a happy marriage, good friends, healthy chhildren. Because of our culture, expressions of gratitude are often difficult to give - cultivating an attitude of gratitude will help. .
