Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Business Networking International (BNI) presented some hard facts about gratitude and what the scientific research shows about its positive impact.

• Harvard Medical School reports that people who express gratitude are more optimistic and feel better about themselves personally.
• The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence concluded that expressing gratitude completes a feeling of connection with other people.
• Paul Zach, a professor at Claremont Graduate University, states that neuroscience shows that recognition has the largest effect on trust, especially when it’s tangible, unexpected, personal, and public.
• UC Berkeley used fMRI scans to show that people who wrote gratitude letters had a better activation in the medial prefrontal cortex than those who did not write the letters.
• Studies by the Cicero group, published in Forbes, found that people who are on the receiving end of gratitude have a 33% increase in their innovation and a 22% increase in work results.

Gratitude improves attitude. It improves feelings of connection, and it improves results. It’s not New Age, it’s science.

You can start to practice gratitude today. Think of the people who have helped you along the way your entire life. Have you thanked them? Now think of those close to you: family, friends, co-workers. How about the nice folks who wait a few seconds longer to hold the door open for you at the carry-out.

Show gratitude towards those who help make your day and life a little easier. It doesn’t take much effort and it costs nothing, yet it makes a huge difference in yourself and those around you.