THANKS - Gratitude
Thank you.
Thank you for reading this, for giving your time and engaging with it. Thank you for what you do in the world. Thank you for making a difference.
Saying please and thank you comes very early in our lives. We are conditioned into it from as soon as we have language and often don’t get what our toddler brain so desires without the magic two words.
But there is so much more to it than that. Noticing the world and being grateful is a life position which lies at the heart of being Useful and Kind. As we know from our investigations of Mental Health, we often pay attention to the gap between the way we imagine the world should be rather than the glorious messiness she is. The news is full of doom and gloom, we are programmed to ruminate on what might go wrong and we are motivated to make things but we can often get lost and miss what is good and what we are grateful for.
This of us trying to make the world better for more people have our heads in figures and statistics and our hearts with those who would benefit from some loving attention. With pandemics, existential climate crises and the developing of puerile populist politics there is much to bemoan ... and yet the world is better for more people now than it has ever been. Hans Rosling (1) in his influential book Factfulness shows how things are in fact better than they have ever been: extreme poverty was 85% in 1800 and is now less than 9%, average life expectancy was 31 in 1800 and is now 72, now there are no countries with a life expectancy lower than 50. A glance at the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (2) will show what distance we have yet to travel not to mention the Herculean efforts required to meet the Paris Climate Agreement.
However, the point is that it seems to be too easy to be drawn to what’s wrong rather than also pausing to notice and celebrate what is going well. Victor Frankl, (3) the Austrian psychiatrist, who was imprisoned in Auschwitz noticed that in extremis all we have within our control is our attitude to what is happening to us. Those who survived psychologically were those who realised this and didn’t give it away.
There are considerable health benefits from turning our attention to what we are grateful for. The latest neuroscience also shows (4) that serotonin, the neurotransmitter that brings softening of tissues can be increased by gently turning our attention to what is pleasant and good.
Think about how nice it is to be thanked for doing something, or simply to be noticed and heard. The thank-you texts, notes, or WhatsApps bring us joy.
Practicing Gratitude (see below) is now one of the most researched and tested tools in the Positive Psychology toolkit.
It has been proven in studies at Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale (5,6,7,8) and has been shown to:
improve sleep
increase alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness
lower stress
strengthen relationships
improve health
improve the immune system
increase energy
enhance alertness
enhance overall life satisfaction
reduce anxiety and/or depression.
The field of Positive Psychology, pioneered by Seligman (9) has solid evidence for the impact of this tool. Initially, it was thought that completing the exercise daily, leading to you having 70 things at the end of the week was the best way to complete it. There has been evidence more recently (10) that, once you have got into the habit, (ie can just live your life with gratitude) that it is more effective to write it down once a week.
Here is the Useful and Kind Version:
TOOL - A Gratitude Journal
Just before you fall asleep write down the things you have been grateful for today.
Things to think about:
Get yourself a nice journal to record these things in
Use it to note what is good about your life and become more mindful of them
How many did you get? If you aim for ten a day you will have 70 things you have been grateful for by the end of the week
How easy were they to find? Were your criteria too high to name 10 good things?
Are there more in Self, Others or World? Explore that balance for yourself
What are the categories and themes? Loved ones, the natural world, something done well, values met, gratitude, sensory etc.
Reflect on whether there are enough of these things in your life.
Decide how you can increase their presence.
Think about how you can turn your attention to what is good in your life tomorrow.
Think about how you can change your attitude to what is challenging and difficult in order to find the good in it.
Be mindful in the moment. Accept what you can change. There is of course merit too in looking at something that hasn’t gone well in your life and trying to identify what good has come out of it.
So in summary. Notice. Turn Up. Be Present. Don’t let the good stuff pass you by.
Action
So the whole focus this month is gratitude. After you have noticed it be grateful. So now thank yourself, others or even the world
What are you going to thank yourself for and how?
What are you going to thank others for? Is it something they have done or said? Something they mean to you? However small think of how you are going to thank them in a way that is BOTH Useful and Kind.
Start with the easy ones (friends family).
Now think of the difficult ones. Focus on what you are grateful to them for. They may even be the way in which you get to practice compassion! Do it with generosity and love. Notice what you are waiting for when you thank them and let that go just offer it as a gift.
Now think of colleague, reportee or boss. Do you want to thank them ‘conditionally’ for doing something well, for their approach to others, for working with you or ‘unconditionally’, simply for being, for being who they are, for being in your team
Now turn your attention to someone you wanted to thank from your past. Bring them to mind. Contact them. Tell them what they meant to you. Reach out. Thanks. Listen. Love.
Thank someone you wouldn’t normally: someone you take for granted, or someone you see regularly but never stop to think about, someone in a shop.
Turn your attitude to be looking for things to be grateful for.
Notice how people receive thanks - notice how you do. Do you deflect it for discomfort? This can discount the intent of the giver. Just thank for thanks.
Further Resources
Rosling H, O and A, Factfulness, Sceptre, 2018
Victor Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning, Rider, 1946/2004
Bloom, The Endorphin Effect, Piatkus, 2011
Emmons, Robert A. Gratitude as a Psychotherapeutic Intervention, University of California David and Robin Stern, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Yale University http://ei.yale.edu/wp-content/ uploads/2013/11/jclp22020.pdf
The Experience in Gratitude https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHv6vTKD6lg
Joel Wong, Joshua Brown, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brain
Michael Craig Miller, In Praise of Gratitude, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/in-praise-of-gratitude-201211215561
Seligman, Martin Authentic Happiness, 2003, 2004, 2011
Lyobimirsky, 2007, 2010, 2013