The Importance of Gratitude in Our Work Lives
Cultivating a sense of gratitude can have important benefits for ourselves and for the people with whom we work. It is an important and beneficial quality, but few of us think much about it, and even fewer of us work at cultivating it.
Psychologist Robert Emmons has made a strong, researched based case that gratitude makes a very beneficial contribution to our psychological well-being. Whether we are going through good times or bad times, if we can cultivate more gratitude we will tend to be happier, have more resilience, and be better able to form personal relationships and to help others. Gratitude helps us to be more open and appreciative of life and of other people.
When we are grateful, we are likely to experience positive emotions such as joy, optimism, love, and enthusiasm, and these protect us from negative emotions such as envy, resentment, or greed. People with especially high levels of gratitude also have higher levels of psychological resilience, and handle stress more easily. And quite often they also enjoy better health.
This has obvious implications for personal well-being. But it also has important implications for our work life.
If we can develop and express more gratitude, we are more likely to handle effectively the stresses and interpersonal conflicts we can experience in our work. We are likely to be more resilient in the face of difficulty.
Because of its social aspect, gratitude brings us closer together. It seems to make us more concerned with our fellow human beings, and this just naturally leads to more collaboration and teamwork. If in our workplace we are able to develop a higher level of gratitude towards each other, and express it to others, this is likely to lead us to a stronger sense of community and a greater ability to work together.
On this episode we will discuss the nature and benefits of gratitude, reasons why we sometimes resist feeling grateful, and how we might cultivate it.
(Time: 8:09)
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About the Faith and Enterprise Podcast
Each podcast episode deals with an aspect of Spiritual Renewal in Our Work Lives. Topics include finding purpose/work as a calling, spiritual practices that can help us in our work, dealing with workplace stress and other forms of workplace toxicity, spiritual aspects of leadership, and building a flourishing work life. We invite you to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play, or listen on our website. You can also subscribe to email updates when we release new material.