Prayer is one of the leading pastimes in self-reflection and gratitude. Having the ability to draw inward and speculate is a fundamental skill if one wishes to grow and achieve an unlimited number of goals and grow spiritually. Praying, specifically, provides such benefits as not coming to understand oneself, but promotes virtuous ideals and personal character growth.

• Better sense of self – Praying brings you closer to yourself as well as the higher power you pray to. A study conducted by Columbia University shows that prayer reduces ego and promotes humility. This makes one more concerned for a greater good rather than just themselves, improving selflessness.

• Good for your heart – Prayer helps regulate your heartbeat, making it stronger and less stressed. Though it is a mental and spiritual activity, prayer has been known to speed up the recovery of the heart following heart attacks and cardiac surgery.

• Increase lifespan – By minimizing all the life-threatening effects of stress and environmental factors, praying helps your body heal more efficiently and age more smoothly. All this put together helps the body heal faster and live longer.

• Improves attitude – Prayer helps you be humbled.Through prayer we come to realize how large the world is and how minor our problems are compared to it. When praying for other people we tend to sympathize to others’ problems rather than be selfish. When praying positively, we tend to see a change in our overall attitude making us feel happy both mentally and socially.

• Gain forgiveness – Prayer helps us to open ourselves to forgiveness. It is important we are all humans who make mistakes and that praying help us forgive ourselves for those past mistakes made so that we can move on. Also, during prayer you may be able to gain some insight and sense of direction.

• Gives us hope – When going through a very emotional phase, prayer helps us believe that there is hope in getting through situations. Praying helps us believe that there is a higher being that we can help us shoulder our burdens. Although having hope may not mean that things will turn out the way we want it to, trusting someone with our problems helps get a burden off our shoulder.

• Relieves stress –  We live in a pressure-filled world where we are constantly being rushed to take on responsibilities, succeed and be at the top of everything. Reflecting on our problems through prayer helps relieve the initial stress of the situation. Leaving our problems up to a higher being.

• Stronger mindset – While prayer also promotes hope in the future, faith is also what keeps a religious person centered and strong. Through their belief they have the strength to overcome both trivial and major worries.

• Recovery – After a situation leaves you emotionally or physically distraught recovery is a timely process. Prayer serves as a way to deal with the aftermath and keep one’s faith. Your mind and body are focused solely on healing while prayer keeps you centered and hopeful.

• Maintain a positive outlook on life –  Day-to-day issues affect our stress levels and mood. Daily prayer keeps religious people looking forward to a better tomorrow. By being thankful for every day and every day to come praying changes one’s outlook on life as a whole.

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