Why be Spiritual? Top Five Benefits of Spirituality

Why be Spiritual? Top Five Benefits of Spirituality

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) February 26, 2013

Spiritual people experience a large amount of gratitude, focus on
compassionate emotions, lead an overall flourishing life, are
self-actualizing, and savor experiences.

Researchers at BeyondthePurchase.org wanted to determine the personal and
societal benefits of spirituality - a search for something sacred. They
determined the positive personality traits of spiritual individuals by
having participants complete over 30 surveys. Here are the top five positive
characteristics of spiritual people:

>1. Spiritual people are gracious. Psychology has demonstrated that
expressing gratitude is associated with many positive emotions such as
optimism, being generous with time and resources, and overall vitality.
Spirituality encourages people to be positive, which may be expressed in
many of these life practices.

>2. Spiritual people are compassionate. Experiencing compassion toward
others is one the strongest correlates with living a spiritual life. A
variety of positive or pro-social emotions have strong links with
spiritualism, including allowing one to feel good about the little things in
life and look at the world through empathetic eyes.

>3. Spiritual people flourish. Spirituality is linked to many important
aspects of human functioning--spiritual people have positive relationships,
high self-esteem, are optimistic, and experience meaning and purpose in
life.

>4. Spiritual people self-actualize. Spiritual individuals strive toward a
better life and consider personal growth and fulfillment as a central goal.
Spirituality can be considered to be a path toward self-actualization,
because it requires people to focus on their internal values and work on
becoming a better individual.

>5. Spiritual people take time to savor life experiences. Individuals who
value spirituality take the time to reflect on their daily activities and
ultimately build lasting memories of their experiences. Because spiritual
people are more conscious of small, daily activities, they experience
positive emotions associated with the smaller pleasures in life.

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