With Thanksgiving around the corner and the busy holiday season approaching, it’s a good time to pause and reflect on the things we are grateful for. Counting our blessings, acknowledging goals we’ve met and celebrating milestones reached are all important ways to practice gratitude, but it’s also important to remember the simple yet essential things that enhance our lives. It’s easy to take a good night’s rest for granted, but there are lots of reasons to be thankful for sleep, including how it positively impacts physical and mental health, promotes energy and focus and improves mood. And studies suggest that practicing gratitude can help us sleep better, too. Here are six reasons to be thankful for sleep, plus how you and your family can incorporate a gratitude practice into your bedtime routine to help you sleep better.
Reasons To Be Thankful for Sleep
So many facets of our lives are impacted by our ability to get enough quality sleep, including our mental health, physical well-being and day-to-day functioning and interactions.
Sleep Makes Us More Reasonable
Our ability to regulate our emotions is strongly tied to sufficient sleep. “In particular, REM sleep, or dream sleep, helps us to integrate emotion and memories. This allows us to respond appropriately in different situations in our waking life and effectively manage complex emotional experiences,” says Susan Rubman, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. “In essence, sufficient sleep allows us to dial up or down the intensity of our emotions more consciously, comfortably and effectively.”
Sleep Helps Our Mental Health
Getting adequate sleep can help improve one’s mental health by lowering anxiety and depression. “Good quality sleep reduces stress, decreases the risk of anxiety and depression, and improves overall mental health by effectively managing cortisol levels in the body,” says Rosalee Lahaie Hera, CEO, certified sleep consultant, and founder of Baby Sleep Love. Some of the mental health benefits of sleep include improved problem-solving skills, decision-making capabilities and the ability to be creative. Studies also show that sleep deficiency changes activity in some parts of the brain, leading to difficulty making decisions, solving problems, controlling emotions and behavior, and coping with change. Sleep deficiency has also been linked to depression, suicide and risk-taking behavior.
Sleep Helps Us Focus
Getting enough quality sleep every night leads to better focus and decision-making abilities. “Attention, concentration, reaction time and impulse control are all diminished when we are deprived of sleep,” Rubman explains. “Performance improves in activities like sports, test-taking, driving reactions and complex decision-making when we get enough sleep.” This is why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that adults get seven to nine hours of sleep per night.
In addition, sleep is critical for memory consolidation. “[Sleep helps] us sort out the information from our daily experiences and form lasting memories of important events and make connections or associations between events,” Rubman says. “This functions in the same way that we do when we sort through our email, deleting the spam and junk email and saving the more important notifications that we need to pay attention to in the future.”
Sleep Improves Our Health
Good quality sleep improves immune system functioning, which helps the body fight illnesses effectively. In part, this is because your immune system releases proteins called cytokines, which are your first line of defense against illness and inflammation. When you’re run down and sleep-deprived, production of these essential proteins may decrease, leaving you more susceptible to viruses like colds or flu. In addition, Rubman says, “Evidence shows us that sleep deprivation can reduce our ability to produce T cells, for example, which are vital for targeting and destroying viruses, germs and bacteria. Moreover, insufficient sleep can reduce our ability to make antibodies, whose job it is to recognize viruses and other organisms and respond to vaccines. We need these antibodies and T cells, among other things, to help maintain our good health.”
Sleep also lessens the risk of cardiovascular disease, allowing us to recharge, grow, learn [and] remove oxidative stress that builds from accumulated wakefulness. One thing we’ve learned from our research looking at the role of sleep in cardiovascular disease risk is that when you get sufficient sleep, your body engages a process to trigger antioxidant response to the buildup of oxidative stress that accumulates over the day,” says Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Ph.D., founding director of the Center of Excellence for Sleep and Circadian Research at Columbia University and author of “Eat Better, Sleep Better.” She adds, “When you don’t get enough sleep, this is compromised, and antioxidant responses are not produced. This is a problem because more wakefulness happens when you don’t get enough sleep [which] raises oxidative stress. This increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.”
Sleep Helps Us Be Better Parents and Partners
When we don’t sleep well at night, we feel tired, grumpy and unfocused the next day. This can adversely affect the way we interact with those closest to us, including our children and partners. “Great sleep makes both the body and the mind feel fantastic and ready to take on the world,” Lahaie Hera says. “This is particularly important for parents and caregivers with small children. Good sleep can help parents and caregivers feel increased gratitude for the waking hours they have with their children.”
Research on the relationship between sleep quality and social relationships found that supportive social connections were positively associated with sleep quality, and aversive ties were related to poorer sleep quality. A preliminary study examining sleep, mood and stress in a family context, in which participants included mothers, fathers and children, concluded that findings “suggest a close link between mood and stress on one side and sleep quality on the other side in all family members (e.g., child, mother and father).”
Sleep Is Critical for Making Smart Food Choices
When we get enough sleep, we have a better ability to make healthy food choices. “Research shows us that sleep deprivation increases the amount of the hormone ghrelin in our bodies. This is the substance that tells us that we are hungry,” explains Rubman. “Increased ghrelin, associated with not enough sleep, leaves us craving high-calorie, carbohydrate-dense foods and larger portion sizes to satisfy that increased hunger.”
Lahaie Hera seconds that notion, saying, “Sleep helps to stave off food cravings and overeating, ultimately leading to a healthier weight and lifestyle.” Indeed, a study published in the International Journal of Endocrinology found that sleep deprivation and other sleep disorders are believed to cause metabolic dysregulation due to overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, hormonal imbalance and inflammation.
How Gratitude Can Help You Sleep at Night
Practicing gratitude leads to the release of feel-good neurotransmitters, including serotonin and dopamine, which have a positive effect on one’s mood, reduce stress and anxiety, and generally improve one’s overall psychological well-being. There is some evidence to suggest that practicing gratitude can help you sleep better, too, though Rubman is careful to note that “while direct research linking gratitude specifically to neurotransmitters like serotonin levels is still emerging, the correlation between gratitude practices and improved mental health supports the idea that gratitude may positively influence neurobiological functioning.”
Psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough conducted research on people with neuromuscular disorders to assess what effect a grateful outlook has on psychological and physical well-being. Their article “Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life,” published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, showed that participants reported getting longer, more refreshing sleep after keeping nightly gratitude lists for three weeks.
Researchers at the University of Manchester in England used this finding as a jumping-off point for their study, testing whether gratitude influences sleep. The study included over 400 adults of all ages, 40% of whom had sleep disorders; the findings showed that “gratitude predicted greater subjective sleep quality and sleep duration, and less sleep latency and daytime dysfunction.” In other words, people fell asleep faster and slept longer and better.
In a study in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being led by psychology professor Nancy Digdon, findings showed that writing in a gratitude journal for 15 minutes each evening before bed helped students worry less and have longer, higher-quality sleep as a result.
How To Practice Gratitude for Better Sleep
Building a gratitude practice as part of your bedtime routine has the potential to positively impact your sleep quality. “Turning down the volume of the noise in our minds and shifting away from distressing thoughts and anxieties by practicing gratitude at bedtime can help our bodies relax into sleep,” Rubman says. “It allows us to settle our minds, increase our sense of connectedness, and create a more peaceful mental state that can allow us to drift into sleep.” Here, sleep experts offer some tips on how to develop a gratitude practice for better sleep.
Keep a Daily Gratitude Journal
Writing down things you are grateful for in a dedicated journal can help you develop an intentional gratitude practice. “Find a journal that suits your personal style, a lined notebook with a beautiful image on the cover, a clean book of dot grid paper, a spiral bound notebook; make it something that you look forward to picking up,” Rubman says. “Use colored markers or a pen or pencil that appeals to you. Set the stage for a positive experience and make it part of your bedtime ritual each night before bed to write down a minimum of three things for which you are grateful.”
Do a Gratitude-Focused Meditation
A scientific study on the effects of gratitude meditation on the brain found that it can help improve both emotion regulation and self-motivation. Select a gratitude-centric meditation from a book of meditations or a meditation app to help guide you to a more relaxed, positive state of mind to set the stage for a restful night’s sleep. “I would suggest taking a minute for introspection and reflection as part of a calm-down bedtime routine to think of the positive events of the day. Some may want to write down the thoughts or do this along with a breathing app,” St-Onge says.
Make a Gratitude Box or Jar
Using small slips of paper, make a practice of jotting down one or two things you are grateful for each day and put them in the box or jar. “When you need an emotional pick-me-up, take a few slips at random from the jar and read them to help remind yourself of items that you may have forgotten,” Rubman says. “This method does double duty, allowing us to feel gratitude both at the time we write our notes and then again when we read them later.”
Develop a Gratitude Script
Rubman suggests considering developing a gratitude script to guide your gratitude reflection:
- Think of someone whom you are close to; a partner, a child, a sibling, a lifelong friend, and call to mind something you appreciate about that individual or something you are grateful for specific to that person. Think about how your life has been affected by your interaction with that individual.
- Then think about someone who is not as close to you but to whom you might feel some degree of gratitude; perhaps a neighbor with whom you had a pleasant conversation or a respected former teacher or a coach. Maybe a co-worker with whom you shared your lunch break. Think about any gratitude you may feel toward them or how your interactions with them may have enriched your life.
- Next, think about someone with whom you have relatively little personal connection; your regular letter carrier who carefully protected your mail from the rain, the pharmacist at your local pharmacy who may have answered your questions patiently, the regular server at your local coffee shop who pours your morning brew, the cashier at your grocery store who packs your groceries efficiently so that the fruit doesn’t get bruised and the bread doesn’t get squished. Think about any gratitude you may feel toward this individual.
- Finally, think of someone with whom you have no personal connection; the person who slowed down to let you merge into another lane in traffic, the person who wrote your favorite book, the person who invented your coffee maker, or the individual(s) on your favorite sports team. Even though you are not connected to this individual, think about how they may have impacted your life and well-being.
Practice Gratitude Throughout the Day
Keep track of the little things you’re grateful for by jotting them down in a small notebook or in your Notes app. “Gratitude does not need to be kept for bedtime,” St-Onge says. “Being appreciative of the little things around us throughout the day can be helpful to improve optimism and positive thinking.”
How To Incorporate Gratitude Into Your Child’s Bedtime Routine
Integrating a gratitude practice into kids' bedtime routines can be beneficial for families, too. “A gratitude practice can be a wonderful way for caregivers/parents and children to connect and relax together before sleep,” Lahaie Hera says.
Here, she offers five ways to help your child sleep better with a gratitude practice.
Develop a Gratitude Sleep Phrase
Say a gratitude 'sleep phrase' before bed each night thanking a family member or child for their contributions to the family, such as "Thank you for taking care of me" or "Thank you for making me laugh."
Hold a Family Gratitude Storytime
Sit together as a family before bed and invite each person to name one thing they are grateful for or encourage them to tell a short story about a time they felt grateful for another family member.
Create a Gratitude Jar or Box
Throughout the day, write down things you are grateful for and put them into a gratitude jar (parents and caregivers can assist younger children with writing these). Then, during the bedtime routine, read the notes aloud together. Kids may also enjoy making and decorating a gratitude box using an empty shoe box.
Keep a Gratitude Journal
Let older kids choose a personal journal that appeals to their style and spend a few minutes together each evening, talking about and writing down one or more positive moments in their day.
Express Gratitude Through Art
With younger children, spend a few minutes during the bedtime routine helping them draw something or someone they are grateful for. It can be fun for adults to participate by drawing their own pictures.
