I love making my PSAs! Just made this one while in Las Vegas for the annual Professional Piercers Conference. So many great people and I think such an important message.

WOOF!!

Buck Angel®
Pioneering Filmmaker, Speaker, and Advocate

Research suggests that the regular cultivation of gratitude and appreciation has multiple psychological and physical benefits.

Thankful people typically boast better overall health, fewer physical symptoms, higher in-come, more energy, larger social networks and stronger marriages. They also exercise more.

They fall asleep more easily at night. They sleep longer and more soundly, and they wake up more refreshed.

The practice of gratitude may increase the levels of immunoglobulin A in your throat and nose, increasing your ability to resist viral infections.

Gratitude practices also seem to reduce stress hormone levels in the body.

Research has shown that only about 50 percent of our mood is determined by genetics. The rest is largely determined by what we choose to focus on and cultivate. This focus takes commitment and practice.

Dr. Robert Emmons, a psychology researcher at the University of California-Davis, is author ofThanks.’ How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier (Houghton Mifflin; $25). He suggests some practices that, if done faith-fully, will have you grateful in no time:

Focus on the good others have done for you. This makes us realize that we are interdependent and that we are loved.

Learn to develop a language of gratitude rather than a language of complaint. Ask your friends and family to help. It’s often hard to see for ourselves how much we’re complaining.

Take grateful actions. Smile. Perform random acts of kindness. Help a stranger.

Use your senses to come into the present and appreciate the little things — the smile of a child, the smell of your first cup of coffee in the morning, the beauty of a sunset.

Keep a daily gratitude journal in which you make note of all the good things and the gifts that have come your way that day.