Why Gratitude Makes You Happier
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, people are doing worse, you should be grateful.” You’ve probably heard this before, and it’s one of the most commonplace and useless pieces of advice. When gratitude comes from feelings of guilt, commitment, or shame, it’s not gratitude at all. True gratitude is a practical tool that serves a number of purposes beyond the special after-school nonsense of being grateful for what you have.
How to curb gratitude
At a basic level, gratitude is simply satisfaction and appreciation for what you have. It’s easy to say you’re grateful and remind yourself to be grateful when you’re feeling a little spoiled. However, accepting gratitude as a feeling is another matter entirely. This is what makes it a powerful tool, not just a pleasant habit. And the good news is, it’s a fairly easy-to-use tool.
A regular gratitude session is an easy way to get started. To do this, you just need to sit down and make a list of the things you are grateful for. Another fun option is to leave notes for yourself in the future, or just make a list of the things you are grateful for .
Thanks researcher Robert Emmons also recommends a strategy. Perhaps this will help to remember the bad. Interestingly, we tend to be less grateful in good times because we begin to think we are invulnerable. We get used to being a ball and expect it. To combat this, he suggests :
Try this little exercise. Think first of one of the saddest experiences you have experienced. How often do you think about this event today? Does the contrast with the present make you feel grateful and content? Do you realize that your current life situation is not as bad as it could be? Try to realize and appreciate how much better your life is now. The point is not to ignore or forget the past, but to create in the present a fruitful frame of reference from which one can look at experiences and events.
It might be helpful to keep a gratitude journal , but to go along with Emmons’ suggestion, you might even consider keeping a “How Far Have I Come” diary, in which you recall and write about unfortunate times in your past and how you overcome them. Of course, revisiting old wounds can also be dangerous, so you must keep that in mind as well.
And speaking of mindfulness, getting off autopilot and being present in the moment is the key to feeling grateful, because it takes time for you to tune in to your life and become a little more aware .
Once you start accepting gratitude, a healthy dose can improve your relationship, make you feel better, and even help you through tough times.
Gratitude Makes You Resilient
In one of the most cited studies of gratitude, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , Emmons found that when people kept a gratitude journal, they were happier.
To test this, the researchers simply asked subjects to write down the events of their day, and one group of participants was asked to make a list of what they did better in life than most people – mostly a thank you list. No judgment, no shame, just an objective list of reasons why their life can be great.
Here’s what the research results came to:
… participants in the grateful state reported significantly greater satisfaction with their overall life, were more optimistic about the week ahead, and felt more connected to others than participants in the control condition. Thus , participation in the gratitude condition appears to have resulted in significant and consistent improvements in people’s assessments of global well-being.
It’s really obvious (why don’t you feel happier thinking about happy things?), But the keywords here are “essential and consistent.” Happiness seems to stick over time.
But what’s even more impressive is that it’s true even when your life really sucks.
At one of the worst times in my life, I embraced gratitude as a defense mechanism. I was alone, broken, and had just experienced an unsettling trauma. At the time, it didn’t seem like life could get much worse, but I was tired of being sad all the time. I wanted to feel something else. I started looking for things in my life to be happy about because I was tired of being depressed.
I didn’t know this at the time, but research shows it can help you recover from your injury. A study published in the Journal of Social Psychology found that positive emotions, including gratitude, actually helped people cope better with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The study reported:
Mediative analysis showed that positive emotions experienced after the attacks – gratitude, interest, love, etc. – fully explain the relationship between (a) pre-crisis resistance and subsequent development of depressive symptoms and (b) pre-crisis resistance and post-crisis growth. in psychological resources. Findings suggest that positive emotions after crises protect resilient people from depression and promote prosperity, consistent with expansion and development theory.
If, at that lowest moment in my life, someone would say to me: “Hey, just be grateful for what you have!” I’d like to kick them in the knees. This is the same as telling someone to drink and cope – it’s useless. With this strategy, you are completely unable to deal with your pain. However, since I approached gratitude as a coping mechanism and not as coercive sentiment, it was really helpful.
According to the study, gratitude was the perfect buffer. This will not help you deal with the aftermath of the tragedy, but it can be a useful way to deal with the situation.
Gratitude improves your relationship.
When I’m stressed and angry, I’m not a tough person. Like many people, I tend to vent my shitty feelings on the people around me. It’s not a very appealing quality , but the good news is that it works and vice versa. When you feel grateful and appreciated, you tend to be kinder and sympathetic to people.
A recent study of gratitude found the same thing. Researchers at the University of Georgia surveyed couples about how happily married they are. They found that expressing gratitude is a consistent predictor of happiness.
They studied 468 couples by asking about their communication styles, financial problems, and how often they expressed gratitude. According to the study, couples who could show their appreciation were more likely to overcome obstacles that ruined many relationships, such as money problems. The study’s lead author said :
This shows the power of “thank you”. Even if the couple is experiencing suffering and difficulties in other areas, gratitude in the relationship can contribute to positive results in marriage.
It makes sense. When you feel grateful, you are in your best emotional state. You have slowed down to enjoy the moment and be more mindful of it . It gives you a break to open up to others and try to understand them a little more.
Gratitude makes you feel more in control.
When I changed my point of view and started actively accepting gratitude, focusing on the things in my life that I really liked, I was surprised how big a difference it could have made. I felt I was in control of my emotions, not suppressing them.
It’s the same with my finances. A lot of personal finance focuses on what you don’t have. Think about it. We are always progressing, moving forward, setting goals, trying to achieve more . And that’s cool because that’s how it’s done, but it has a flaw to think about: it assumes that what you have now isn’t good enough, which might not be true.
This is why it took me a while to fix my finances. Several years ago, I completely depleted my savings due to a stupid mistake . I had to recover, but the recovery seemed overwhelming, and I was afraid to go broke for the rest of my life. It may be a legitimate fear, but after absorbing some real personal finance advice, I’ve learned to overcome that fear.
As I accumulated, I began to become more aware of what I had and not what I did not have , and I began to think about what could have been instead of what was not . I invested, I focused on making more money. And then something funny happened: my finances began to improve . And it wasn’t because of any positive thoughts about the Law of Attraction. This happened because thanks to gratitude, I felt that everything was in control, and a sense of control was essential in order to properly manage money. There’s nothing wrong with striving for more, but ironically, trying to find ways in which your life is okay right now seems to make it easier to strive for more.
In a recent TED talk, psychologist Guy Winch highlighted how we tend to berate ourselves when rejected or made a mistake. This is a useless habit that often makes the situation worse. One of his suggestions was to analyze your mistakes more impartially, so as not to repeat them again. But he also offered to thank: instead of focusing on why you were turned down, think about what life is still good at. This will bring you back to the driver’s seat.
For example, when I was fired, I was naturally depressed, angry and confused . Even when I got a new job, I still felt worthless. But when I finally agreed that things like this happen – people lose their jobs every day – I realized that even when shit happens, I have a lot to be happy about in my life. I have a cool apartment. I love my soul mate and my cats. My family is always there. These things existed even without my job, and it was a great wake-up call. Gratitude gave me a better sense of reality: I was no longer defined by work, and I felt that everything was in control.
After all, gratitude works best when you rethink how you feel about it. This is not some old boring ethical obligation stemming from shame and guilt. It’s much better: it’s looking for legitimate reasons to get up every morning and tackle the day with enthusiasm, and accepting this can trigger an amazing, powerful chain of events in your life.