by Sarah Hughes
News Editor
With all that school and work demand from them, very few CSUSM students are spending adequate amounts of time each day focusing on critical emotions like being grateful, calm and positive. Even fewer students were aware of the recent event that was dedicated to promoting mental and spiritual wellness.
Word Gratitude Day, which took place on Sept. 21, is an international awareness day, created in 1977 by the United Nations Meditation Group. This past Saturday marked its thirty-fifth year of celebration. The day was instituted to encourage people to show appreciation and find gratitude for the positive aspects of their life. Most people interpret it as a day to be thankful for the simple blessings in life and to show their gratitude in little gestures.
When considering whether or not gratitude is something that CSUSM students should be concerned about, it is important to look at qualified sources on what one should strive for in order to have a healthy personality and how this might affect one’s health. A lot of scientific studies have been done on the subject of gratitude and how it affects one’s mental and physical health. Notably, one published in a Jan. 2013 journal, Personality and Individual Differences, found that grateful people tend to report better physical health, which is connected to patterns of their being of better psychological states, being active and seeking help in health concerns.
The study, Examining the pathways between gratitude and self-rated physical health across adulthood, was conducted by Patrick L. Hill and Brent W. Roberts of the Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA, and Mathias Allemand of the Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich Switzerland.
The study surveyed gratitude in terms of a predominating outlook of appreciation and attention to the positive in life. The study focused “on how traits predict intermediary mechanisms by which to promote health, rather than asserting direct effects.”
This is different than previous approaches, because measuring physical health factors was more important to the researchers than measuring how a more appreciative person might approach conflict differently than a non-appreciative person.
The study surveyed 962 Swiss adults, ages 19 to 84, of varying educational and marital backgrounds. Participants were given a gratitude questionnaire that measured how much they considered life and their personal situation a blessing. They were also given a health survey that measured their psychological and physical health. They were examined for their attitudes on healthy activities, in regards to nutrition, exercise, personal well-being, social well-being and drug use. Participants were also interviewed on their willingness to seek medical help for health concerns using hypothetical case scenarios. In addition, their personalities were taken into consideration, rating them on levels of extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness.
The researchers cite previous studies, including how conscientiousness and optimism have been linked to better health, and better behaviors that promote health.
“Grateful individuals tend to report greater vitality and agency, along with less anxiety. In addition, gratitude is linked to traits indicative of better physical health, including conscientiousness, emotional stability and optimism,” the report said.
Previous studies have utilized regular diaries in which participants write down something they are thankful for, and review it at a later time. Various bloggers and writers have encouraged similar ideas, either daily or weekly.
But why should CSUSM students really even care about being more optimistic or grateful? Many could argue that doing so makes no major impact on themselves.
However, it is suggested that thoughtful gestures, the giving of one’s resources or volunteering time have a positive affect on the giver. Showing gratitude could include making small unexpected changes, such as writing a thank you note to someone, tipping more or even just treating a friend to lunch or coffee.
In a June article by The Harvard Business Review entitled How Money Actually Buys Happiness, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton cited multiple moneywise parties, such as Google and Warren Buffet. They, and Buffet, encouraged to “give as a way to enhance [one’s] emotional well-being.”
“Spending even a few dollars on someone else can trigger a boost in happiness. In one study, we found that asking people to spend as little as $5 on someone else over the course of a day made them happier at the end of that day than people who spent the $5 on themselves,” Dunn and Norton said.
Being mentally and spiritually well are an important way that CSUSM students can feel more positive and relaxed in the midst of the immense stress that college can create. Students should familiarize themselves with more events that occur annually to promote a healthy lifestyle and mind. Other international days of awareness include International Literacy Day on Sept. 8, International Chocolate Day on Sept. 13, Software Freedom Day on Sept. 15, International Day for Preservation of the Ozone Layer on Sept. 16, Talk Like a Pirate Day on Sept. 19, World Car-Free Day on Sept. 22 and Inventor’s Day on Sept. 29.