Hello, and welcome to spirituality and mental health. I'm your host Don Mackintosh and today we're going to be talking about the power of gratitude. Now, researchers have looked at the thoughts people think throughout the day, and how many thoughts do you suppose the average person has per day? Well, I mean, there's not a lot of research on this, but there's preliminary research being done that shows that we have as many as 60,000 thoughts per day. This is Fred Luskin from Stanford University. Now, here's the problem.

90% Of these thoughts are repetitive. I mean, that's not a problem, I suppose. If it's guiding us in the right way, but here's the problem. Researchers think that about 80% of these repetitive thoughts are negative. Get that 80% of 90% of your thoughts are negative So we have a constant struggle against negativity and negative thoughts and that's why we need to explore the power of gratitude. First of all, what does gratitude do for it, it improves physical health grateful people report feeling healthier, more likely to take care of their health.

Number two, gratitude effectively increases happiness and reduces depression. Number three, those who ranked higher on gratitude scales are less likely to retaliate against others. So you're not going to be as vindictive number four spending 15 minutes jotting down grateful sentiments before going to bed and you'll sleep better and longer that might be an assignment for you to put into your daily routine. Number five, gratitude reduces social comparisons. Grateful people are able to appreciate others accomplishments. They're not always envious or cabbages they're able to move through life with gratitude not only from themselves, and what they've done, but for others.

Veterans with higher levels of gratitude experience lower rates of PT SD or post traumatic stress disorder. So gratitude is a powerful tool as we transverse you know life with its many negative thoughts. So how do we increase gratitude? Robert Emmons who lives near Sacramento and works at the UC Davis has written prompt Perhaps he's the foremost authority on gratitude. And I want to just summarize some of his research, gratitude interventions and psychological or physical well being. He looked at those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis and those who recorded hassles on a weekly basis.

And those who recorded neutral life events. I don't know if I'd want to be the person trying to figure out what a neutral life event is and recording it but that is what the three groups so gratitude hassles neutral life events, what do you suppose they found? Those who kept the gratitude journals on a weekly basis number one exercise more regularly They reported fewer symptoms physically. They felt better about their lives as a whole. They were more optimistic about the upcoming week just by writing a weekly gratitude journal. Now let me just put in some scriptures here, as well.

Remember this is spirituality and mental health. A Mary Hart makes a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of heart, the spirit is broken. And he who is married has a continual feast. And a merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit drives the bone so even that ancient songs that were written in the old test of the Hebrew Scriptures also understand what Emmons is understanding in his research, a related benefit continuing with the research was observed in the realm of personal goal attainment. participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress towards important personal goals, whether it be academic and a personal or health related over two month period compared to subjects and other experimental conditions. So look, if you're a grad, if you're grateful what's going to happen is you're going to have Wait a minute, I have goals I need to reach.

So get ready when you start expressing gratitude, to actually write down your goals and be prepared to actually see them come true. Now, there's a favorite book of mine. In fact, I would recommend it to anyone who really wants to look at spirituality and mental health. It's called the book Ministry of healing. And it says this on page 281, marry rejoicing heart, do with good luck in medicine, we just read that and then comment on it. Gratitude, rejoicing, benevolence, trust and God's love and care.

These are Health's greatest safeguard. Wow, health greatest safeguard is what? gratitude and rejoicing and benevolence that's it that's helping other people and trust them God's love and care greatest health guide Wait a minute, I need some kind of medication I mean some some this or that no gratitude. We'll come back to that statement later. I want to in read the end of it for you, but let's continue with the research. Now they had weekly gratitude journals.

But if you want to kick it up a notch here it is. In fact, I do this every day in my home and when we meet together to have like, a time of study of the word and praise. And I ask people to say what they're grateful for a daily gratitude intervention, with young adults resulting in higher reported levels of positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness, and energy. Compared to that other group they hassles or downward social comparison group, in which participants thought they were better off than others. There were no difference in levels of unpleasant emotions reported in the three groups. So get that you had all the same unpleasant emotions that would try and crop up.

Remember we have how many thoughts a day seven Thousand thoughts a day 60 70,000 thoughts a day, how many are repetitive 90,000 How many are are negative 80 80%. And so those negative thoughts will keep coming up. But if you're expressing gratitude, you're actually beating them back. We actually found those who wrote in their gratitude journals daily, got more benefits than those who did weekly. You know, in the place that I attend my faith community, we actually have a midweek service where we express gratitude publicly as well. And then we do that also on the weekend, as well, but in between, we're doing this at home.

And daily gratitude deepens as we give an expression and the joy it brings his life to soul and body. In other words, when we express it, we start thinking of other things we're grateful for. And that begins to like this kind of gratitude tsunami in our soul and body and then to others. People, participants in the daily gratitude condition were more likely to report these things. Having helped someone with a personal problem, or having offered emotional support to another relative to the hassle or social comparison condition. So if you're grateful, then you start helping other people offering personal support or emotional support.

And this part of the research, especially grip me in a sample of adults with neuromuscular disease, a 21 day intervention resulted in greater amounts of energy and positive moods, a greater sense of feeling connected to others number three more optimistic ratings of one's life, better sleep duration, number four and sleep quality relative to the control group. So how many of you want to start focusing on gratitude as an actual therapy for yourself, and actually even helps with physical neuromuscular problems measuring the gratitude disposition grateful people report higher levels of positive emotions life satisfaction, vitality, optimism, and lower levels of depression and stress. The disposition toward gratitude appears to enhance pleasant feeling states more than it diminishes unpleasant emotions. A great for people do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life. They have many unpleasant emotions, but they overcome the bad with the good. So it's kind of like a great controversy all day.

It's like, Okay, I've got these negative things that can come up, wait a minute, I've got the positive things. I'm going to overcome the negative with the good. Well, let's look at the spiritual aspect of this. In the research done by Emmons, he also discovered this, those who regularly attend religious services and engage in religious activities such as prayer, reading religious material, are more likely to be grateful to come as no surprise to To us, for those who've been following the spirituality and mental health presentations because we've seen the research on that. Grateful people are more likely to acknowledge a belief in the interconnectedness of all life, and a commitment to and responsibility to others. So if you want to be connected with others, gratitude is one of the key elements.

Now, look at this, here's the research. Keeping a gratitude journal caused participants to report 16% fewer physical symptoms, how many would like to have 16% fewer, fewer negative physical symptoms 19% more time spent exercising 10% less physical pain 8% more sleep, and 25% increased sleep quality. I mean, that list alone interests me in being actually more grateful. I'm actually grateful I'm doing this program today. So a gratitude visit. Reduce depressive symptoms by 35%.

For several weeks, a gratitude journal lowered depressive symptoms by 30%. And even more for as long as the practice was continued. Patients with hypertension were instructed to count their blessings once a week, and there was a significant decrease in their systolic blood pressure. systolic is that hardest beat diastolic is feeling the heart systolic the rest of the body but that's where it's, you know, the strongest beat was lowered. So it lowers blood pressure. Gratitude is correlated with improve sweet sleep quality.

So, it's correlated with improves sleep quality, less time required to fall asleep, increased sleep duration. And so gratitude significantly is correlated to vitality and energy multiple studies. So gratitude can extend your lifespan but lifespan by a few months or even years. According to some researchers, and you can see here on this graph that happiness is is motivated by many of these aspects that are connected with gratitude. So there is a spiritual part of this, what would it be enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and then to His courts with praise, be thankful unto him and bless his name. One of the major functions of church worship is gratitude and praise.

And the place that I attend, we spend a lot of time doing that, praising God and thanking him for what's happening now. What about the Bible and gratitude? Hebrews 1315, let us offer the sacrifice of praise Psalm 107 22, the sacrifice of thanksgiving Psalm 116 17, the sacrifice of Thanksgiving, Psalm 31, verse four, David said, let me praise God at all times Luke 2453. The first Christians were continually praising First Thessalonians five And everything give thanks Ephesians 510 and 20 be filled with the Spirit, which is directly linked with having praise. First Peter to nine, praises the chief function of the royal priesthood. Psalm 100 verse four begin every service with praise revelation 19 five.

This is what happens continually before God's throne Praise and Gratitude Psalm 150 verse six and everything that everything that has breath praise, Psalm 113 verse three from sunup to sunset praise Psalm 22 three God one habit, the praises of Israel, when you have gratitude and you praise God actually comes near you and habits, the praises, x 247. They Praise God. And this led to the Lord adding to the church daily. You know, when people are grateful when they're filled with praise, other people want to be around them. Psalm 50 verse 23, whoever offer praise glorifies me. So this is the big one.

Have a perspective of it. Now I want to look at the neural chemistry of praise and gratitude. Gratitude, researchers have found engages the parasympathetic nervous system, which in effect increases get this serotonin and produces feelings of peace and call what when you express gratitude, it actually increases serotonin. Now serotonin is a happy chemical. The one that many drugs actually that are given for depression tries to save them serotonin reuptake inhibitors, so they try and make sure it doesn't go away. But gratitude actually adds new serotonin to the equation and not only that, dopamine affects parts of the brain involved in motivation, reward and pleasure.

It helps to become more mindful of positive social interactions so you can understand that a special experience has occurred heard it's involved in initially getting the signal that we've received a blessing or gift says gratitude researcher gear coma, Bono. So look, when you express gratitude, and the dopamine, which is usually low dopamine is linked to both depression and anxiety. The experience of gratitude may give you a double whammy boost and help counter the tendency toward these conditions. So gratitude biochemically helps you with increase serotonin and dopamine now, we're gonna take a break. I mean, there's so much more to talk about gratitude, but we're gonna take a break right now, during that break. Why don't you make a gratitude list?

Why don't you start saying what has gotten done for me? What has happened in my life? And maybe you don't share that with your family tonight or someone today? Maybe your work Why don't you go ahead and start making that list right now and maybe review the promises that I put down in terms of the Scriptures, and maybe, maybe write something about how you're grateful for those if you are. So we'll take a break now we'll let you do that. And then we'll come back