Increase motivation (DW#621)
Sometimes people who are high achievers begin to believe that they must only focus on the future target in order to achieve more. Focusing on what you already have and showing gratitude for it, they think, can leave you feeling complacent and would dampen ambition. In other words, "If I have enough, maybe I don’t need to achieve more."
This prevailing but unproven idea has been debunked by the research done by rock-star gratitude researchers Robert Emmons and Anjali Mishra.
This particular study involved students listing goals they hoped to reach over a two-month period. One group of students were asked to maintain a regular gratitude practice and the other group was not given this instruction. Ten weeks later, when the researchers checked back on the students’ progress, they found that grateful students were closer than others in the study to reaching their goals.
Emmons and Mishra concluded that "gratitude enhances effortful goal striving." In other words, it makes striving towards goals easier. A lot of times we give up on goals because we become impatient at obstacles or because progress is slower than we expected. By practicing gratitude along the way towards our goal, it improves our patience and allows us to stay the course towards goals.
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