http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/pay_it_forward/
Gratitude is more than a pleasant feeling; it is also motivating. Gratitude serves as a key link between receiving and giving: It moves recipients to share and increase the very good they have received.
We've discovered scientific proof that when people regularly work on cultivating gratitude, they experience a variety of measurable benefits: psychological, physical, and social. In some cases, people have reported that gratitude led to transformative life changes. And even more importantly, the family, friends, partners, and others who surround them consistently report that people who practice gratitude seem measurably happier and are more pleasant to be around.
If you want to sleep more soundly, count blessings.
Individuals who report habitually experiencing gratitude engage more frequently in kind or helpful behaviors than do people who experience gratitude less often.
Gratitude strengthens social ties. It cultivates an individual's sense of interconnectedness.
We can see not just that we are worthy of kindness, but that kindness indeed exists in the world and, therefore, that life may be worth living.
Life becomes complete when we are able to give to others what we ourselves received in the past.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/quizzes/take_quiz/6
Evidence suggests that of all the practices tested by positive psychology research, including those covered in this course, the Gratitude Letter might provide the single greatest happiness boost, particularly when it is delivered and read in person.
Call to mind someone who did something for you for which you are extremely grateful.
Now, write a letter to one of these people in the space below, using the following guidelines:
Next, plan a visit with the recipient, which will allow you deliver the letter in person. Let that person know you'd like to see him or her and have something special to share, but don't reveal the exact purpose of the meeting.
Some general guidelines to keep in mind for the visit:
Feeling gratitude can improve health and happiness; expressing gratitude also strengthens relationships. Yet sometimes expressions of thanks can be fleeting and superficial. This exercise encourages you to express gratitude in a thoughtful, deliberate way by writing—and, ideally, delivering—a letter of gratitude.
The letter affirms positive things in your life and reminds you how others have cared for you—life seems less bleak and lonely if someone has taken such a supportive interest in you. Visiting the giver allows you to strengthen your connection with her and remember how others value you as an individual.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_good
Gratitude journals and other gratitude practices often seem so simple and basic; in our studies, my colleagues and I often have people keep gratitude journals for just three weeks. And yet the results have been overwhelming. We've studied more than one thousand people, from ages eight to 80, and found that people who practice gratitude consistently report a host of benefits:
We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness.
Gratitude can reduce the frequency and duration of episodes of depression.
Gratitude gives people a perspective from which they can interpret negative life events and help them guard against post-traumatic stress and lasting anxiety.
Once you start to recognize the contributions that other people have made to your life—once you realize that other people have seen the value in you—you can transform the way you see yourself.
One is the "self-serving bias." That means that when good things happen to us, we attribute them to something we did, but when bad things happen, we blame other people or circumstances.
Gratitude really goes against the self-serving bias because when we're grateful, we give credit to other people for our success.
Gratitude also goes against our need to feel in control of our environment. Sometimes with gratitude you just have to accept life as it is and be grateful for what you have.
With gratitude comes the realization that we get more than we deserve. I'll never forget the comment by a man at a talk I gave on gratitude. "It's a good thing we don't get what we deserve," he said. "I'm grateful because I get far more than I deserve."
This goes against a message we get a lot in our contemporary culture: that we deserve the good fortune that comes our way, that we're entitled to it. If you deserve everything, if you're entitled to everything, it makes it a lot harder to be grateful for anything.
Keep a gratitude journal. This can mean listing just five things for which you're grateful every week. This practice works, I think, because it consciously, intentionally focuses our attention on developing more grateful thinking and on eliminating ungrateful thoughts. It helps guard against taking things for granted; instead, we see gifts in life as new and exciting.
nother gratitude exercise is to practice counting your blessings on a regular basis, maybe first thing in the morning, maybe in the evening. What are you grateful for today? You don't have to write them down on paper.
You can also use concrete reminders to practice gratitude, like putting up a notice encouraging jotting down gratitude on provided notes.
It's important to think outside of the box when it comes to gratitude. Mother Theresa talked about how grateful she was to the people she was helping, the sick and dying in the slums of Calcutta, because they enabled her to grow and deepen her spirituality. That's a very different way of thinking about gratitude—gratitude for what we can give as opposed to what we receive.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/stumbling_toward_gratitude
In study after study, researchers have found that if people actively try to become more grateful in their everyday lives, they're likely to become happier—and healthier.
"You can do something simple, such as stop and notice an instance of natural beauty, e.g., a sunrise, a flower, a bird singing, a couple gazing at each other, or start keeping a journal of beautiful moments in which you write down each day the most beautiful things you saw and then return to it before you go to sleep."
Consciously trying to find things to savor is kind of like looking for mushrooms in the forest: Once you start paying attention, they're everywhere!
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_can_help_you_through_hard_times
Consciously cultivating an attitude of gratitude builds up a sort of psychological immune system that can cushion us when we fall.
Try this little exercise. First, think about one of the unhappiest events you have experienced. How often do you find yourself thinking about this event today? Does the contrast with the present make you feel grateful and pleased? Do you realize your current life situation is not as bad as it could be? Try to realize and appreciate just how much better your life is now. The point is not to ignore or forget the past but to develop a fruitful frame of reference in the present from which to view experiences and events.
If you are troubled by an open memory or a past unpleasant experience, you might consider trying to reframe how you think about it using the language of thankfulness. The unpleasant experiences in our lives don't have to be of the traumatic variety in order for us to gratefully benefit from them. Whether it is a large or small event, here are some additional questions to ask yourself:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/love_honor_thank
When partners feel that the division of labor (a combination of housework and paid work) in their relationship is unfair, they are more dissatisfied with their marriage.
A successful relationship doesn't just depend on how partners divide labor, but on how they each express gratitude for the labor the other one contributes.
Our research suggests one of the keys to determining who will perform a specific household task is each partner's "response threshold," which describes the degree of disorder that must exist before someone is sufficiently bothered to perform a task that's not being done. Individuals with low response thresholds for a specific task are moved to perform the task earlier than those who have a higher threshold.
Partners may have different thresholds for many (or even most) tasks. If one partner's threshold level consistently is lower than the other's, then that first partner will take on a greater share of the housework.
If the laundry (or accounting, or dishes) is defined as "yours," then your partner is unlikely to feel gratitude toward you for doing it. After all, you are just doing what you are "supposed" to do, what you are "so much better" at doing.
mportantly, gratitude can help alter the dynamics of couples' division of labor. Expressing gratitude reminds the under-performing partner that the division of labor is not fair, and that his partner's contributions are a gift. And since people who receive gifts typically feel obligated to reciprocate, this insight can lead the under-performing partner to offer "gifts" of his own by contributing more to household tasks. In addition, the over-performing partner is likely to experience less resentment and frustration once her efforts are recognized and appreciated.
So how can couples cultivate gratitude, compensate for different tolerances of disorder, and thus create more equitable divisions of household labor—and greater satisfaction with their relationships?
Part of the answer comes from simply being aware of these phenomena. Once one understands that, in a sense, one's partner truly did not "see" the dirty dishes, piles of laundry, and overflowing garbage, one tends to be less angry and can discuss the issue more calmly.
Over-performers should avoid repetitively performing a task they don't want to "own," especially when first living with their partner. In other words, when you first move in with your romantic partner, be careful not to cook dinner every night.
Write down a list of their tasks and then switch lists for a week or month to better understand your partner's contributions.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_stops_gratitude
What must be overcome as a culture or as individuals in order for gratitude flourish?
Research has strongly suggested that gratitude is essential for happiness, but modern times have regressed gratitude into a mere feeling instead of retaining its historic value: as a virtue that leads to action.
Losing sight of protection, favors, benefits and blessings renders a person spiritually and morally bankrupt.
People who are ungrateful tend to be characterized by an excessive sense of self-importance, arrogance, vanity, and an unquenchable need for admiration and approval. Narcissists reject the ties that bind people into relationships of reciprocity. They expect special favors and feel no need to pay back or pay forward.
Narcissism is a spiritual blindness; it is a refusal to acknowledge that one has been the recipient of benefits freely bestowed by others. A preoccupation with the self can cause us to forget our benefits and our benefactors, or to feel that we are owed things from others and therefore have no reason to feel thankful.
Entitlement is at the core of narcissism. This attitude says, "Life owes me something" or "People owe me something" or "I deserve this." Entitlement and self-absorption are massive impediments to gratitude.
Humility is a key to gratitude. Humble people are grounded in the truth that they need others. We all do. Seeing with grateful eyes requires that we see the web of interconnection in which we alternate between being givers and receivers. The humble person says that life is a gift to be grateful for, not a right to be claimed.
Reigning in entitlement and embracing gratitude and humility is spiritually and psychologically liberating. Gratitude is the recognition that life owes me nothing and all the good I have is a gift. It is not a getting of what we are entitled to. My eyes are a gift. So is my wife, my freedom, my job, and my every breath.
Recognizing that everything good in life is ultimately a gift is a fundamental truth of reality. Humility makes that recognition possible.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/five_myths_about_gratitude
Gratitude not only doesn't lead to complacency, it drives a sense of purpose and a desire to do more.
Gratitude isn't just a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling. It has responsibilities that go along with it.
Grateful people give credit to others, but not at the expense of acknowledging their own responsibility for their success, they recognize their own feats and abilities while also feeling gratitude toward the people—parents, teachers—who helped them along the way.
Not only is gratitude possible in those circumstances—it's vital to helping us get through them. When faced with adversity, gratitude helps us see the big picture and not feel overwhelmed by the setbacks we're facing in the moment.
Science suggests we can cultivate or maintain an attitude of gratitude through hard times, and that we'll be better for it.
The new science of gratitude has clearly shown that people can have a grateful disposition even if they're not religious.
The gratitude journal is one of the most widely tested happiness practices we cover in this course; research by Dr. Emmons, Michael McCullough, Sonja Lyubomirsky, and others have linked it to benefits ranging from greater happiness to better sleep quality. Many people outside of academia who have learned about this research have started to keep a gratitude journal themselves.
While it's important to analyze and learn from bad events, sometimes we can think too much about what goes wrong and not enough about what goes right in our lives. A gratitude journal forces us to pay attention to the good things in life we might otherwise take for granted. Research suggests translating thoughts into concrete language makes us more aware of them, deepening their emotional impact.
Six habits of grateful people:
When you find yourself taking a good thing for granted, try giving it up for a little while.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_foster_gratitude_in_schools
Key principles that educators can use to promote gratitude in their students:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/gratitude_is_for_lovers
Research suggests that gratitude is a key ingredient in successful romantic relationships.
Gratitude causes a reinforcing loop: Gratitude for relationship -> want to keep relationship -> work for relationship -> partner feels appreciated -> partner feels gratitude.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/five_ways_to_cultivate_gratitude_at_work
Ninety-three percent agreed that grateful bosses are more likely to succeed, and only 18 percent thought that gratitude made bosses "weak." Most reported that hearing "thank you" at work made them feel good and motivated. Almost all respondents reported that saying "thank you" to colleagues "makes me feel happier and more fulfilled".
Employees need to hear "thank you" from the boss first.
Thanking those who do thankless work is crucial because it sets the bar and establishes the tone.
The key is to create times and spaces that foster the voluntary, spontaneous expression of gratitude.
How do you convey authenticity? Details are decisive. When you are specific about the benefits of a person, action, or thing, it increases your own appreciation—and it tells a person that you are paying attention, rather than just going through the motions.
For example a bulletin board for thank you notes. Gratitude can mediate conflict, a supervisor with two bickering employees might open a meeting by expressing sincere appreciation of both parties.
"There is scientific evidence that grateful people are more resilient to stress, whether minor everyday hassles or major personal upheavals."
Gratitude helps employees to see beyond one disaster and recognize their gains. Ideally, it gives them a tool "to transform an obstacle into an opportunity."
Updated on 2020-07-22.