What do you want out of life?

Yes, some people want to be successful. But many more people say that they would rather be happy and healthy.

At least part of being happier and healthier comes down to our attitudes. There’s a solid volume of evidence suggesting that being grateful may lead to both greater happiness and better health. For example, studies suggest that grateful individuals tend to report feeling less stress; another study found that gratitude is also linked to better sleep quality.

Strictly speaking, those sorts of studies are correlational in nature. They do not allow us to tease out which came first: do people feel grateful go on to sleep better? Or is it the other way around, that people who sleep better go on to feel more grateful?

However, other experimental studies have found that teaching people a simple method (that literally takes minutes) can actually improve not only people’s psychological well-being but also their physical health. By cultivating gratitude, we may help ourselves to notice what’s good and right in our lives – it may also help us to take better physical care of ourselves, too.

Ready to invest in yourself? Go on. Give this a go.

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Want to be happier and healthier IN MINUTES? . Sometimes when we have a bad day, it can feel as if NOTHING is right. But that's actually rarely the case. When we stop to think about our lives, we can often think of things that are going well. We just need to stop to think more broadly about ourselves. . Psychologists have noted that people who have what's known as a higher level of dispositional gratitude tend to be happier. Dispositional gratitude is a psychological tendency to notice and appreciate what's positive about life. . The good news is that this positive attitude can be TRAINED. . Several experiments have shown that people who take a few minutes to think about positive experiences tend to have better psychological AND physical health. In one study, people who did a gratitude exercise actually ended up having to go to the doctor fewer times over the following three months than others who did other written exercises. In another study, people who practised gratitude reported fewer health complaints that same evening. . This exercise is EASY. When we stop to think about it, there are often many things in our lives, both large and small, that we might be grateful for. All you need to do is to write down up to FIVE things that you are grateful or thankful for. . Simple, right? Just write down up to FIVE things. And do this ONCE a week. . Try this now if you like. In the comments below, jot down 3 to 5 good things for which you feel grateful. You don't have to write them in a way that will make sense to anyone but you. Do this not for anybody else. Just do this for YOU. . . . #happiness #emotions #resilience #goals #careergoals #success #highachievement #productivity #psychology  #positivepsychology #change #youcanchangeyourlife #lifecoaching #coaching #evidencebased #mind #mentalhealth #grateful  #gratitude #threegoodthings

A post shared by Psychologist Dr Rob Yeung (@doctorrobyeung) on Dec 9, 2018 at 5:47am PST

gratitude happiness health mental health wellbeing