That’s men: Be thankful for what you have, and your heart will thank you

“I hate ingratitude more in a man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, or any taint of vice whose strong corruption inhabits our frail blood.”

So declares Viola in Twelfth Night. If Shakespeare shared his character's views, he would have been cheered by research suggesting that those who are grateful are happier and healthier than those who are not.

I have met people who fear that if they are grateful for something, they are letting themselves down in some way; that they are putting themselves in danger of missing out on whatever it is they want more of. It’s as though they believe, on a subconscious level, that ingratitude is the only viable attitude to adopt in a competitive world.

A recent piece of research suggests that their ingratitude leaves them more likely to suffer the loss of health and happiness than to gain by it. Indeed, people who are strangers to gratitude are pretty miserable to be around. They are like the mythological “hungry ghosts” who can never be satisfied, no matter how much they consume. To learn that ingratitude is bad for them leaves me quite unmoved. In fact, it might even make me feel a little bit grateful.

It may seem odd to say that ingratitude could affect your health. But the role of gratitude in cultivating positive mental health has been established over a good many years now through research that contributed to the positive psychology movement. The new piece of research, at the University of California, found that cardiac patients who felt a sense of gratitude had lower levels of markers for inflammation that could adversely affect the health of one’s heart. Their sleep was better than that of their less-grateful fellows, and their emotions were more positive. They were less likely to be tired.

The research was published by the American Psychological Association in Spirituality in Clinical Practice.

Spirituality also tends to have a beneficial effect on wellbeing, and the researchers came to the interesting conclusion that it is the gratitude component of spirituality that contributes to that wellbeing.

“We found that spiritual wellbeing was associated with better mood and sleep, but it was the gratitude aspect of spirituality that accounted for those effects, not spirituality per se,” according to Paul J Mills, professor of family medicine and public health at the university.

People who are ungrateful by nature or by habit miss out on the benefits suggested by the research. The hungry ghosts stay hungry.

Most of us are not quite in the category of “hungry ghosts”. We have the trait – no doubt evolutionary – of focusing on what we lack but we are, nonetheless, capable of being surprised, delighted and gratified.

It looks as if that capacity brings its own reward, a sort of bonus we get along with whatever it is we feel grateful for. And all this suggests further that deliberate gratitude may be a really good life skill even in this uncertain and competitive world.

The research findings included a clue to a way of cultivating that sense of gratitude effectively in our lives. People who wrote down what they felt grateful about, typically three things a day, had lower levels of those inflammatory markers during the time they were writing; and the variability of their heart rate increased, which is an indication of a lower risk of having another heart attack.

So if you want to cultivate gratitude to boost your own wellbeing, both emotionally and physically, try writing down a few things daily for which you feel grateful.

If this all sounds gooey and sentimental, consider the fact there’s a lot of scientific research behind the value of gratitude. Sometimes gooey and sentimental people put us off what are actually good ideas. With all that science behind it, gratitude is worth trying out even if you insist on putting on your serious face while you’re doing it.

You can read more about the research at http://bit.ly/heartcal on the Science Daily website.

Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness on the Go. His mindfulness newsletter is free by email. pomorain@yahoo.com