How to Get More Vitamin G

Eating a balanced and nutritious menu and keeping fit are incredibly important in terms of your overall health and wellness, but there are also other important factors to take into account, such as your thoughts.

No matter how much you exercise and how well you eat, if you are constantly thinking negative thoughts and stressed out, your health will be compromised. Negativity can cause stress and stress in the body has been linked to inflammation which in turn has been linked to illness. On the other end of the spectrum, positivity increases endorphins which make you feel good and have been linked to increased immunity.

There are those that say positivity is a choice. Which to some degree is true, but for some this does not come easily. Perhaps there are people who are just born with a positivity gene, or maybe its life circumstances; the old nature or nurture debate. And even those of use who have a generally positive outlook on life, we're not that way 100% of the time. So how can all of us cultivate more positivity in our lives?

You just need a good dose of Vitamin G.

So what is Vitamin G? I call it gratitude. And just as different vitamins and drugs have been tested by scientists for their improvement of health issues, so has gratitude.

It can be easy to think about all of the things we don’t have, the way we’d like other people in our life to be, the way we’d like to be, the way we’d like the weather to be. But how often do we say and think about all of the things that we are actually grateful for in life in comparison to the negative thoughts?

The Emmons Lab at UC Davis has a department and web page dedicated to the scientific study of gratitude.

Check out some of their findings:

• Those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).
• Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental conditions.
• A daily gratitude intervention (self-guided exercises) with young adults resulted in higher reported levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to a focus on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in which participants thought they were better off than others). There was no difference in levels of unpleasant emotions reported in the three groups.
• Participants in the daily gratitude condition were more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or having offered emotional support to another, relative to the hassles or social comparison condition.
• Children who practice grateful thinking have more positive attitudes toward school and their families (Froh, Sefick, & Emmons, 2008).
• 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. Grateful people do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.
• People with a strong disposition toward gratitude have the capacity to be empathic and to take the perspective of others. They are rated as more generous and more helpful by people in their social networks (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002).
• Those who regularly attend religious services and engage in religious activities such as prayer reading religious material score are more likely to be grateful. Grateful people are more likely to acknowledge a belief in the interconnectedness of all life and a commitment to and responsibility to others (McCullough et. al., 2002). Gratitude does not require religious faith, but faith enhances the ability to be grateful.
• Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods; they are less likely to judge their own and others success in terms of possessions accumulated; they are less envious of others; and are more likely to share their possessions with others relative to less grateful persons. Reference

Skeptical? I challenge you to add in a dose of gratitude just as you would daily exercise. It can even take as little as 5 minutes out of your day. Have fun with it, and if you can, journal as this will help you to see how your overall mood and attitude changes, and how your relationship with other people change for the better.

Simple ways to add in gratitude to your life:

1. Take 5 minutes out of your day to sit in a quiet space and bring to mind all of the people and things you are grateful for; your friends, your significant other, your family, your pet, your health, your home, etc. Bring these to mind one by one and then really feel the gratitude and positivity that begins to radiate inside of you. If you don’t have 5 minutes or a quiet place to sit, bring to mind things that you are grateful for as often as you remember to throughout the day.
2. Make a gratitude journal. You can do this on your own or there are several that you can purchase.
3. Or if you more of a techy, get a gratitude app. 
4. Or make your own gratitude blog.

References: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/Labs/emmons/PWT/index.cfm?Section=1