Podcast: The Power of Gratitude with Dr. Laurie Santos

headspace Studios [Music]

hello it's Dr Laurie Santos welcome to radioheadspace if you don't know I'm a psychology professor at Yale and host of the happiness lab a podcast all about the science of Happiness today I'm going to talk about how gratitude can genuinely make us feel better and I'll share some tips for how to put it into practice

even if we're not feeling all that grateful I think we can Define gratitude as a sort of two-part process first gratitude is about recognizing the good things in your life oh my gosh this is great you know Taste of coffee the fact that the people I love are alive but gratitude also has a second part

which is a sort of attribution which is to realize like that didn't necessarily have to be the case the universe is giving you this wonderful gift that that blessing exists and it's a moment of thankfulness that you have it in the first place there's evidence that if you regularly engage in a practice of gratitude if you

take time to experience things that you're thankful for you wind up feeling better you wind up self-reporting more positive emotions and a deeper satisfaction with life and this can come even through the act of expressing gratitude to other people one of my favorite Studies by Marty Seligman and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania had subjects

do what he calls a gratitude visit he tells his subjects we want you to write a letter of gratitude to someone who's been especially kind to you but you've never thanked them and then you have to deliver that letter in person to the person in question and you have to read it to them