Lds spiritual thoughts on gratitude1/13/2024 ![]() ![]() Emmons randomly assigned participants into one of three groups. They exercise more frequently, report fewer illnesses, and generally feel better about their lives. Emmons and his colleagues found scientific proof that people who practice gratitude through activities such as keeping a gratitude journal are more loving, forgiving, and optimistic about the future. Gratitude is literally one of the few things that can measurably change people’s lives. But while the emotion seemed simplistic even to me as I began my research, I soon discovered that gratitude is a deeper, more complex phenomenon that plays a critical role in human happiness. It is possible that psychology has ignored gratitude because it appears, on the surface, to be a very obvious emotion, lacking in interesting complications: we receive a gift-from friends, from family, from God-and then we feel pleasurably grateful. Robert Emmons, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and one of the leading scholars in the scientific study of gratitude, said the following: Being mindfully grateful for our blessings and expressing gratitude has a strong correlation with increasing our personal happiness and well-being. It now appears that some psychologists have arrived at the same conclusion. Remember what Mark Twain said: “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” 3 The Study of Gratitude I know those words are familiar, and I believe you accept them at face value: Counting our blessings and being grateful for them has a positive impact-not just upon our lives but upon the lives of those to whom we show our gratitude. In the latter part of the 19th century, Johnson Oatman Jr., a Methodist preacher, penned the following words, which we know as the hymn “Count Your Blessings.” I quote from the second verse:Īre you ever burdened with a load of care?ĭoes the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?Ĭount your many blessings ev’ry doubt will fly,Īnd you will be singing as the days go by. I am especially grateful to have my wife, Sandra, and my family with me today as well. ![]() President Samuelson, members of the administration, students, and faculty, I appreciate the opportunity of being with you today. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. . . It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It turns what we have into enough, and more. ![]()
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