{"id":7277,"date":"2008-12-02T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-02T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/12\/02\/happiness-is-a-letter-of-gratitude-away\/"},"modified":"2008-12-02T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-02T12:00:00","slug":"happiness-is-a-letter-of-gratitude-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/12\/02\/happiness-is-a-letter-of-gratitude-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Happiness is A Letter of Gratitude Away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/booster_shots\/2008\/11\/happiness-is-ju.html\">latimesblogs.latimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">WASHINGTON, USA, November 28, 2008: A secret to happiness may be in expressive writing; specifically, writing letters to people showing gratitude. Steven Toepfer, an assistant professor of family and consumer studies at Kent State University, conducted a study to determine what would make people feel happier, especially in a consumer-oriented culture in which things are supposed to bring us joy.<\/p>\n<p>He had students write one letter every two weeks for a six-week period to people who had had a positive influence on their lives. The letters had to be positive, include some insight and reflection, didn&#8217;t venture into trivial waters, and expressed great appreciation. After each letter was written, the students took a survey that gauged their mood, their satisfaction with life, and their feelings of gratitude and happiness.<\/p>\n<p>According to Toepfer, the students&#8217; levels of happiness increased after each letter, and 75% of them said they wanted to keep writing the letters, even when the study was finished.<\/p>\n<p>He added, &#8220;We are all walking around with an amazing resource: gratitude. It helps us express and enjoy, appreciate, be thankful and satisfied with a little effort. We all have it, and we need to use it to improve our quality of life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>latimesblogs.latimes.com WASHINGTON, USA, November 28, 2008: A secret to happiness may be in expressive writing; specifically, writing letters to people,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}