A survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Motivosity, in July 2022 has concluded that the more thankful people are, the happier they are, StudyFinds reports.

The poll involving over 2,000 Americans found that 65% of those surveyed who said they were very happy in life were also those who most often (always) expressed gratitude for things done for them.

The survey also found that of the 35% who stated that they regularly expressed gratitude for their lives, 62% said they were also ‘very satisfied’ with their lives.

Along this vein, the survey found that on average Americans expressed gratitude six times a month for kindnesses that someone had done for them and said they also received the same amount of expressions of gratitude.

The survey also discovered that Americans living in the Southwest part of the US, 75%, were most often to express gratitude for things done to them while those living in the Southeast (68%) and Northeast (63%) were least likely to express gratitude.

According to Motovosity VP Logan Mallory there is a “dramatic correlation between gratitude and happiness.”

“When people are proactive about being grateful,” Mallory added, “it rewires their brain to look for positives instead of the negatives around them. Previous studies and these survey results tell us that if you want to experience an increase in life satisfaction, just express gratitude more often!”

And of course, 2,000 years earlier, the Apostle Paul repeatedly encouraged believers to give thanks and tied it to life satisfaction.

In Philippians 4:6-7, Paul encourages us to pray with thanksgiving as an antidote to worry and in Colossians 3:15, thankfulness is tied to having the peace of God in our heart and in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, we see thankfulness connected to joy.

Thankfulness is ultimately a choice. We choose to focus on those things we can be thankful for or we can choose to focus on our regrets, mistakes, and failures.

READ: Expressing gratitude may be true key to happiness, survey suggests