Research indicates that dedicating just 15 minutes a day, five days a week, for six weeks to practicing gratitude can significantly enhance mental well-being and instigate a long-term shift in perspective. Studies have also unveiled connections between gratitude and reduced levels of depression, diminished anxiety, improved sleep quality, and better heart health.
What's particularly intriguing is how gratitude impacts the brain. In a study by Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center in 2016, scientists compared brain activity between individuals who wrote gratitude letters and those who didn’t. Joshua Brown and Joel Wong, the authors of the study, noted, "The group writing gratitude letters exhibited heightened activity in the medial prefrontal cortex when experiencing gratitude during fMRI scans." What's remarkable is that this effect persisted even three months after the letter-writing exercise had begun, suggesting that the act of expressing gratitude could have enduring effects on the brain.