While running madly from pillar to post this year-end, take a moment to count your blessings ? not least of all because being grateful is good for your health ? but it also opens you up to receive further blessings.

Be grateful ? be happy

Discussion around the relationship between gratitude and happiness suggests that grateful people are happier people.

"When people consciously practise grateful living, their happiness will go up and their ability to withstand negative events will improve ? as does their immunity to anger, envy, resentment and depression," says psychologist Robert Emmons, who published his findings in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

He found that individual happiness is a result of outlook, rather than life circumstances.

Acknowledging and being grateful for all the good things in your life immediately increases your satisfaction with what you have, makes you feel more blessed, and more likely to do more for others. It can also help refocus us on the things that are important and meaningful in our lives, and take the focus off the small things that can get us down.

Sally Lazarus adds, "for me, gratitude is the difference between being overwhelmed by my own, rather trivial problems, or seeing them as they are ? insignificant in comparison to others".

"Being grateful turns your focus from what you don't have, to what you do have."

It's good for you

Dr Emmons' study, conducted along with fellow psychologist Dr Michael McCollough, revealed the physical benefits of daily gratitude exercises include: higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy.

Additionally, the gratitude group was more likely (than a control group) to help others, to exercise more regularly and make more progress toward personal goals. According to the findings, people who feel grateful are also more likely to feel loved. McCollough and Emmons also noted that gratitude encouraged a positive cycle of reciprocal kindness among people, since one act of gratitude encourages another.

Emmons says that science generally ignores the positive emotions, focusing only on the negative and pathological. Yet gratitude research is beginning to suggest that feelings of thankfulness have tremendous positive value in helping people cope with daily problems, especially stress ? and to achieve a more positive sense of self.

More to be thankful for

"The moment you start saying thank you, and feel that gratitude inside, the wheel automatically starts to turn in your favour," says life coach Kate Emmerson.

This will instantly shift your energy to a state of appreciation, and this in turn opens your heart. "You immediately start opening yourself up to the potential of 'new' to come your way. You literally become like a magnet, attracting good things, and that makes you feel increasingly better," suggests Emmerson.

"Gratitude is a vital concept to manifest positive change in your life. It is also important that one focuses on all three time zones of life. We need to make peace with the past and what it gifted us thus far, we need to have a compelling future that inspires us endlessly, and we also need to have deep gratitude for all that we already possess right now. What a powerful threesome when practised simultaneously!" says Emmerson.

"Ideally, if you can build a few minutes of gratitude into your life on a daily basis, you will truly transform your world. Find a regular time that will work for you. Maybe even brushing your teeth and mentally doing the list, or with your first cup of coffee, or as you drop the kids off at school and make your way in the car. Pledge to do this for the next 30 days ? and prepare to watch some magic unfold in your life!" she advises.