Expressing Appreciation Improves Mental Health

May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

Practicing gratitude is a simple and effective way to improve mental health. Practicing gratitude is my favorite way! It is free, is accessible to all, feels good in the moment, and has long-term positive benefits for mental health. Today, I visited my hometown to deliver a presentation at the library on 5 simple ways that you can incorporate gratitude into your life every day.

One of these methods is to express appreciation for someone every day. This is a powerful exercise because the number factor related to happiness is our relationships. Expressing appreciation for people in our lives or their behavior is the easiest way to increase the level of closeness and improve the quality of our relationships.

Here are 3 ways to express appreciation:

Send an email at the beginning of every day.

One study found that 80% of people hold their breath when they open up their work email in the morning. This does not promote well-being or relaxation. One way to prevent the negative impact of holding your breath is to intentionally make opening up your computer a positive one by writing a positive email before you read any of your emails.

Start your day by expressing appreciation for one person through email.

Scroll to the bottom of your text messages or facebook messages.

Your facebook and text messages are in chronological order. In other words, the longest amount of time has passed since you have corresponded with the people at the bottom. You may have seen them in person or communicated in another fashion, but these are the people where the longest amount of time has passed since using that method.

Reach out to one person at the bottom of the list. Surprise that person and express appreciation for a shared experience, for a quality about that person, or for your relationship.

Write a gratitude letter

A gratitude letter is a little bit different from a thank you letter. Thank you letters are wonderful, and they are typically written after receiving a gift, or after someone has done something nice for you.

A gratitude letter is reflecting upon your past, and thinking about who you appreciate. The letter is more about expressing appreciation for that person and the relationship, rather than a gift or what that person has done.

Of course that can be part of it, but the focus is expressing appreciation for the person, the relationship, and the positive impact that the person has had on your life.

One study found that this simple exercise improved the mental health status of college students, simply by writing one gratitude letter, once a week, for three weeks.

What’s even more powerful is that these benefits increased over time! Writing letters of gratitude resulted in an increase in self-reported mental health functioning over time for these college students.

When we sit down to thoughtfully write a gratitude letter, we are focused on positivity. Recalling memories and nice qualities about a special person brings up a warm feeling, which can be attributed to the release of serotonin and dopamine in the brain.

In addition to being an exercise in positivity, this is also powerful due to the absence of negativity. You’re not thinking about your worries of the day or your to-do list. It’s a nice reprieve from the cycle of negative thinking.

This simple exercise of expressing appreciation is a win-win! You feel good, and you make someone else feel good!

Which of the above can you do today?