The Impact Of Gratitude On Wellbeing

Lyubomirsky defines happiness as the “experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile” (184). She challenges the myths that people can find happiness by changing their circumstances and that people either are “born happy or unhappy” (186). Happiness is not something that can be found or something that not everyone can have. People make their own happiness, despite the difficulties they may face. Happiness comes by “choosing to change and manage your state of mind” (185). Lyubomirsky gives cases of people who are happy even though they suffer from losses and setbacks. These are the people whose circumstances should make them unhappy, but their intentional actions bring them joy. She also gives cases of people who have not suffered any major losses but are still unhappy because they may see events negatively and feel helpless before them. Lyubomirsky asserts that “changes in our circumstances, no matter how positive and stunning, actually have little bearing on our well-being” (186). Even though a person’s circumstances may be positive, those circumstances do not make them happy. Lyubomirsky uses a Subjective Happiness Scale to measure happiness, which takes the average of numerical answers to four questions. She argues that in order to become happier, “you need to determine your present personal happiness level, which will provide your first estimate of your happiness

Happiness is an essential goal for most people. From books and expensive classes that teach people how to achieve happiness to the fundamental right of “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, the importance of happiness is evident in society. This causes the rise to two fundamental questions: “How does one attain happiness?” and “,How does happiness create a meaningful life?” Both happiness and living a meaningful life are achieved simultaneously. The search for happiness and the factors that make it brings meaning to life. Happiness can stem from several factors such as wisdom and knowledge, savoring life and its experiences, and even suffering and pain. Analyzing these factors brings meaning to one’s life.

- Wellbeing is the condition or state of a human being, animal or plant. There are five types of wellbeing…

If you would like to live a happy and more so, successful life, it is vital that you learn to express gratitude wherever you go. In order to reach where you would like to be in life, everyone should concentrate on their goals and objectives. Through expressing gratitude, people can learn to show good deeds, and hence be able to receive the same goodness, in return. (Radwan, Msc.) Gratitude refers to the act of being thankful, noticing simple pleasures, counting every little blessing, and acknowledging every good done unto you. In other terms, it can be described as living life as if everything happening in it is a miracle, and being able to continuously acknowledge every much you receive. On the other hand, when people decide to concentrate a lot of energy on bad things in life, it will make them remain in the state of conflict. But by developing gratitude, it will allow someone to focus on positivity and the good things in life. It must be understood that this will allow an individual to always remain optimistic, and with enthusiasm much success can be achieved.

Wellbeing is ‘generally understood as the quality of people’s lives. It is a dynamic state that is enhanced when people can fulfil their personal and social goals. It is understood both in relation to objective measures, such as household income, educational resources and health status; and subjective indicators such as happiness, perceptions of quality of life and life satisfaction, (Statham and Chase 2010).’ It is important to acknowledge many factors play a role in measuring childhood well-being but it is necessary to look at both positive and negative indicators in orders to get a realistic overview as well as an overall understanding of well-being as a whole. Throughout the course of this essay both subjective and objective aspects of children’s well-being will be discussed as well as how the value of measuring both aspects can enable us to gain a holistic understanding of childhood well-being.

Even if we use the word “happiness” on daily basis, has anyone ever tried to define it? It’s harder than it seems. When do you feel happy? How is it when you feel happy? Is there any way to understand how much happiness to you experience? This is the main hypothesis of this paper – Can happiness or wellbeing be measured? And if it can be measured, how do we measure it? Happiness is feeling pleasure and enjoyment because of your life, situation (Meriam Webster). Pleasure and enjoyment are very subjective and means different things to different people. This is where the term subjective wellbeing comes from. There are a lot of things that can be included when measuring wellbeing. Various studies have been conducted to assess wellbeing and how does it affect other factors. For example Earlstin(1995) and later on Ferrer-i-Carbonell(2005) have examined the relationship between income and happiness. Gruber(2004) studies the relationship cigarette taxation and happier smokers. Richard, Clark, Gerogellis and Diener(2004) analyze the effect of unemployment on wellbeing.

Many people don’t comprehend, and much of the time underestimate, the hugeness of good well being. Well being, as is commonly said, is riches. Great well being is fundamental to take out day by day obligations when examining well being, numerous individuals would trust the circumstance of their bodies and disregard about the circumstance of their psyches. On the other hand, well being is not just about diminishing and being free from substantial parts of well being. It additionally recommends being sound personality a main priority as well.

As we all enjoy our delicious Dinner, the topic of Happiness is brought up to our dining table. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, author of “The Sources of Happiness” starts to converse about happiness. He mentions how people should be grateful and happy with what they have and not with what they wish or desire, since that’s not what makes a person’s happiness. As the conversation continues, he claims that happiness is within one’s mind and not with natural phenomena. In addition, he discusses how money doesn’t build a person’s happiness. On the other hand, Gretchen Rubin, author of “July: Buy Some Happiness” claims how “money can’t buy happiness, but it helps contribute to your happiness.” (Rubin 293). Gretchen Rubin

Expressing gratitude helps individuals have an healthy life by creating an physique healthy. By having the time to developing healthy you are in about how grateful, we create a sense of change of , which lead you to be more grateful person . In “31 Gratitude Exercise That Will Boost Your Happiness,’’ Courtney Ackerman  writes, “gratitude has been shown to Improve physical health. People who show gratitude report fewer aches and pains, a general feeling of health, more regular exercise, and more frequent checkups with their doctor than those who don’t”. People who attain Gratitude have been known to be  improve in health and also experience more positive outcome during health improvement, because it is a great attitude to keep the doctor away.

Thus, all three studies showed that the gratitude condition not only raised daily positive affect, but also, reduced daily negative affect, during the 21-day study period. In addition, the experimentation based on gratitude caused improvement people’s amount of sleep and the quality of that sleep. Furthermore, the effects on well-being (positive affect and life satisfaction) were quite obvious to the participants (Emmons & McCullough,

Happiness is not the only indicator of psychological wellbeing. There are some others such as life satisfaction (e.g. Neugarten, Havighurst, &Tobin, 1961; Wood; Wylie, & Sheator, 1969), emotional and mental health , or subjective wellbeing (Kozma, Stones, & McNeil, 1991). These concepts have been used synonymously with psychological wellbeing, however, even though they are related with psychological wellbeing, they are not identical and should not define psychological wellbeing (Stull, 1987).

Having gratitude – the quality of being thankful; a readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness – is another way people of all cultures cultivate happiness. Instead of

The pursuit of happiness is the universal search for a life an individual can feel content and satisfied with. However, as stated in class, happiness is a fleeting emotion rather than a prolonged state. Once an individual achieves a sense of happiness it is only a matter of time before they return to the starting point of their quest. Therefore, happiness alone is not enough to elicit a good life. On a similar note, in 2004, Professor Martin Seligman gave a TED talk that addressed the current direction of psychology. He believed the extent of psychology had become the ability to “make miserable people feel less miserable” rather than “[making] relatively untroubled people happier.” As a result, he and his colleagues developed positive psychology, a branch of psychology that promotes the components of happiness, well-being, and fulfillment to achieve a satisfactory life. The purpose of this project is to learn about your well-being and discover ways to increase the quality of your life through positive psychology.

According to Heffernan and Boniwell (2011) gratitude promotes the savouring of positive events and may counteract hedonic adaptation. Heffernan and Boniwell (2011) continue to mention that when people count their blessing once a week there is an increase in well-being. Gratitude has been shown to contribute to not only an increase in positive affect and other desirable life outcomes but also to a decrease in negative affect and problematic functioning as demonstrated in diverse samples such as among patients with neuromuscular disease, college students, hypersensitives, and early adolescents (Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Froh, Sefick, & Emmon, 2008; Shipon, 2007). McCullough et al. (2001) showed that grateful individuals were especially appreciative of the contribution of others to their happiness. However, it is thought that when people count their blessings more than three times a week the exercise becomes a chore and loses meaning. Therefore, implementation of the gratitude intervention is highly important for its fruition. According to Robert A. Emmons and Anjali Mishra gratitude motivates moral behaviour, enhance the ability to access positive memories, builds social resources, increases self-esteem and reduces materialistic

In the Winterbourne View Hospital there was an absence of wellbeing based on what Diener (2000) calls subjective wellbeing. This is where a person experiences a high (subjective wellbeing) satisfaction such as feelings of joy and low (subjective wellbeing) if the individual is dissatisfied with life and feels sadness (Diener, 2000). Diener’s view of wellbeing is socially constructed which involves making sense of things based on comparisions with societal values. Optimistic cultures such as the United Kingdom tend to emphasies the positive aspects of life while pessimistic cultures such as France have been noted to look at the shortcomings of life (Diener, 2000; Myers et al. 2014). Social comparisons clearly are at play here in deciding who