Scientists, celebrities and others are beginning to discover the wisdom of something prophets, the scriptures and hymns long have been teaching.

Constant gratitude leads to happiness.

In official circles, this movement is known as "positive psychology." One well-known television personality has recommended people put this into practice by maintaining a "gratitude journal." This is a book a person would use to regularly record the things for which he or she is grateful.

Scientists have studied the results of keeping such a journal. The McClatchy-Tribune Regional News service reported recently on a University of California at Davis study in which participants were divided into three groups. The first group kept a journal listing things for which they were grateful. The second kept one describing things that upset them, and the third merely wrote down things that had happened, with no judgment as to whether they were good or bad.

After 10 weeks of this, the group that wrote gratitude journals were found to be 25 percent happier than the others. Those people exercised more, felt better about themselves, got more sleep and enjoyed better health.

The psychology professor who led the study described why. He said showing thankfulness is a choice. "It means that our internal reactions are not determined by external forces."

What his test didn't describe is something followers of the Savior have been taught in each dispensation. Being grateful leads to spiritual blessings. The hymn "Count Your Many Blessings" could have been a guide for this study:

Are you ever burdened with a load of care?

Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?

Count your many blessings; every doubt will fly

And you will be singing as the days go by.

However, being ungrateful ranks among the most serious of sins. In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord says, "And in nothing does man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments" (Doctrine and Covenants 59:21).

Why is this? President Henry B. Eyring, second counselor in the First Presidency, once described the challenges faced by a group of saints who tried to live with all things in common. He said they began to falter when they forgot their past. "We so easily forget that we came into life with nothing," he said. "Whatever we get soon seems our natural right, not a gift. And we forget the giver. Then our gaze shifts from what we have been given to what we don't have yet."

This was the lesson taught by King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon.

"And again I say unto you as I have said before, that as ye have come to the knowledge of the glory of God, or if ye have known of his goodness and have tasted of his love, and have received a remission of your sins, which causeth such exceedingly great joy in your souls, even so I would that ye should remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness, and his goodness and long-suffering towards you, unworthy creatures, and humble yourselves even in the depths of humility, calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the angel.

"And behold, I say unto you that if ye do this ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of your sins; and ye shall grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you, or in the knowledge of that which is just and true" (Mosiah 4:11-12).

Or, as the University of California professor put it, being grateful leads to an awareness that life is a gift, which can help even people who are suffering badly to begin looking outward and to feel happiness.

In other words, count your blessings. "Name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done."