Everyday Gratitude (With a Twist)
Hi friend,
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and were able to take — and really savor — at least a bit of time just for yourself. (You both need and 100% deserve it.)
Given the holiday, I have no doubt you’ve been exposed to quite a bit of messaging over the past few weeks about the power of gratitude and the value of giving thanks.
But it’s important to note that there is absolutely nothing seasonal about the benefits of gratitude, and there is much to be gained from continuing these practices throughout the year.
Because I know this is easier said than done, today, I wanted to share with you some of my favorite practices for cultivating gratitude on a daily basis and for making sure I’m not taking life’s most precious gifts — big and small — for granted during the non-November months of the year.
But first, a quick note on why cultivating gratitude is such a powerful strategy for enhancing our well-being. (FWIW, it also happens to be an incredibly potent tool for enhancing physical health, creativity, work engagement, relationships, and myriad other positive factors.)
One of the most straight-forward explanations can be found in an equation set forth in Arthur Brooks’s Atlantic article, The Three Equations for a Happy Life, Even During a Pandemic:
SATISFACTION = WHAT YOU HAVE ÷ WHAT YOU WANT
As Brooks explains, many people spend their lives chasing happiness by trying to increase the numerator in this equation — that is, by trying to increase the scope/amount of things they have (i.e., I’ll be happy when I get/achieve…).
But these efforts prove futile because of something called hedonic adaptation or the hedonic treadmill effect.
Hedonic adaptation is humans’ innate tendency to acclimate to our new circumstances remarkably quickly, causing whatever happiness boost we may have derived from our acquisition/achievement to wane, and prompting us to shift our sights higher toward the next object of our desire.
(Ever feel like the goal post seems to move farther each time you reach it, leaving you on a hamster wheel of ceaseless striving? Or — consider this — How long did any contentment you enjoyed after attaining your last promotion/raise/accolade last before you began hustling for your next achievement? This is the hedonic treadmill effect at work.)
Because the benefits of increasing our “haves” are fleeting at best, Brooks posits that the real secret for increasing satisfaction involves focusing on the denominator of this equation — that is, by reducing what we want.
And one of the most potent ways to reduce what we want involves focusing on — and cultivating our appreciation for — what we already have.
Herein lies the power of gratitude practices.
While there are many different ways to cultivate gratitude, I’ve found the following approaches particularly impactful:
My Morning Gratitude Practice Unpacked
My morning gratitude practice involves a variation of the famous “Three Good Things” exercise, which — in its simplest form — entails writing down three good things, or three specific things for which you are grateful, that transpired in the past 24 hours.
These things can be big or small — anything from you enjoyed a massive win at work yesterday to the crisp air is perfect this morning — as long as they’re specific. (That is, instead of just writing, “I am grateful for my husband, Zach” everyday, I could write, “I’m grateful that Zach pulled the car out for me this morning,” or “I’m grateful that Zach and I had a playful moment on his way out the door and were able to meaningfully connect”).
The Three Good Things exercise has a remarkable track-record of producing long-lasting positive results, including increased happiness and reduced stress and depression.
Notably, researchers have determined that the exercise does not necessarily provide people with an immediate infusion of happiness (like I said, the “daily gratitudes” can be extremely minor). Rather, what this practice does is cause us to develop a HABIT of looking for good things in our days because we know that we will have to put them on our list.
And this causes us to NOTICE a much greater number of positive things and, in turn, to EXPERIENCE more far more positive emotions than we would have otherwise
This is especially true because of the negativity bias – which is our evolutionary-based tendency to notice and focus more on negative things than we do on positive ones, because in the days of saber tooth tigers, that helped keep us alive.
(And for lawyers and law students, the negativity bias is especially pronounced given the nature of legal training, which, let’s face it, is basically an ongoing crash-course in issue-spotting and fault-finding.)
While there are many different variations of the Three Good Things exercise (and I encourage you to play with it to find what works best for you), I’ve adapted the practice to create the following morning ritual:
Each morning, in the roughly one minute it takes my Keurig machine to brew my coffee, I write down three things from the past day that I’m grateful for on a post-it and place it in a large glass jar that neighbors the Keurig on my kitchen counter.
Why the morning coffee pairing?
It enables me to capitalize on the benefits of habit stacking: a strategy for making a new habit stick by identifying a habit you already perform everyday and stacking your new habit on top of it.
I’ll admit that when I first learned about the Three Good Things exercise, I had grand plans about writing my daily gratitudes in a new journal I bought specifically for that purpose. But for whatever reason, I couldn’t bring myself to actually do it — at least consistently.
Bothered by my inability to follow through, I decided to deploy Atomic Habits author James Clear’s four laws of behavior change: (1) Make it obvious; (2) Make it attractive; (3) Make it easy; and (4) Make it satisfying.
Make it obvious: My morning coffee is non-negotiable – there is never a morning when I don't make it. And the Keurig always takes a full minute to warm up and brew – just enough time for me to complete my gratitude practice. No extra time needed – it’s already baked into my schedule!
Make it attractive: Did I mention my post-it notes are hot pink? Aside from that, as a result of the habit stacking, my brain has come to associate completing my daily gratitudes with the warm feelings of delight that accompany savoring my morning coffee. Let’s face it, there are few things more attractive than that.
Make it easy: I make sure to leave a stack of post-its and a pen immediately beside the Keurig for ease of access. (This step is critical, as I’ve learned that the time required to look for a pen can be more than enough to derail my practice on a hectic morning or morning when I’m lacking motivation.).
Make it satisfying: This is where the glass gratitude jar comes in. I’ve found it to be immensely satisfying to watch the jar fill up over time, providing me with a further incentive to stick with the practice. In addition, each time the jar eventually fills up, before emptying it, I engage in a related ritual of reviewing my daily gratitudes from the preceding months, offering an additional source of satisfaction.
And now for the twist . . . (Listen up: This part is important)
After listing three things for which I’m grateful, I identify one thing that I’m committed to letting go of in the upcoming 24 hours.
This can be a tangible thing — for instance, I often use this as an opportunity to scan my (often over-packed) calendar and to-do list with an eye toward identifying something I can remove (e.g., “Today I will let go of that non-urgent networking call between meetings that will result in me being on Zoom for four straight hours with no breaks.”) (N.B.: This need not require last-minute cancellations. It can involve taking something off my calendar for some later date — it still counts for “today” as long as I’m identifying and committing to let go of it in this moment.).
Alternatively, it can be more figurative, (e.g., “Today I will let go of second-guessing how I did during yesterday’s presentation,” or “Today I will let go of beating myself up for not having nearly as much energy today as I feel I should.”).
Why this addition?
Well it’s not directly related to gratitude, but if you’re reading this post, my guess is that, like me, you’re probably really good at ADDING items to your plate and to-do lists. And yet, I’ve come to realize that often, what I need most of all is to ELIMINATE tasks and mental preoccupations so that I can fully show up for all that remains.
So while it’s not technically a “gratitude” — I’ve decided that giving myself the gift of elimination each day is itself something for which I’m profoundly grateful.
Twist #2:
In the spirit of encouraging experimentation (like I said, while I’m sharing what I’ve found works best for me, I encourage you to figure out what clicks for YOU), I want to share one additional variation on this exercise that I’ve turned into a separate weekly ritual.
Each Sunday, when Zach and I are making dinner, we verbally exchange our Three Good Things for the past week.
This has proved to be a great strategy for providing Zach with the accountability he needs to follow-through on his regular gratitude practice (for him, daily feels like overkill — like I said, find what works for you!), as well as prompting me to reflect on the week’s highlights, and perhaps most importantly, providing us with a special weekly opportunity to positively connect.
Mental Subtraction for a More Powerful Punch
Speaking of Zach, as much as I adore him, and as regularly as he makes it onto my daily gratitude list, there are inevitably times when stress, distraction, or other forces prevent me from appreciating him as intentionally and perceptibly as I should.
I know I’m not alone in this.
It is alarmingly easy to race through our lives on autopilot without fully appreciating or even recognizing the things we value most dearly.
But I’ve found that mental subtraction — which involves contemplating all of the ways that a positive event/relationship/development in your life may not have materialized, and reflecting on how you would feel if that thing were instantaneously and irrevocably taken away from you — is an enormously powerful strategy for countering this effect.
To perform this strategy (which I strive to do semi-regularly to ensure I’m not taking any of my most treasured gratitudes for granted), complete the following steps:
Step 1: Call to mind something REALLY positive that you currently have in your life. It can be a job or educational opportunity, a relationship, a physical possession, or anything else that jumps into your mind. Take a moment to close your eyes and really visualize that thing, how you feel about it, and what makes it so important to you.
Step 2: Now imagine that the thing you're envisioning NEVER happened or materialized, or that it was taken away from you or completely eliminated from your life in a flash. Take a minute to really imagine what that would be like for you. (Seriously — close your eyes and allow yourself to fully process what that would mean for you and what it would feel like.)
Step 3: Come back to the present and take action accordingly.
This last step is critical.
Joni Mitchell famously wrote, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone."
But it doesn't have to be that way.
We CAN increase our awareness of what we've got while we still have it — while we still have the opportunity to fully savor and appreciate it (and, where possible and applicable, to express our gratitude and appreciation to its deserving recipient). All it takes is willingness to slow down and a bit of conscious effort.
So today, friend, I encourage you to contemplate what strategy you might deploy to help YOU slow down (even momentarily while your coffee’s brewing), so you can identify and fully appreciate the positive things in your life.
Then, I encourage you to brainstorm what steps you might take to help yourself do that regularly, rather than waiting for another full year to pass. (Have you noticed they seem to be zooming by even more quickly lately?!)
As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s any way I can support you in this effort.
In the meanwhile, know that I am rooting for you.
With love (and immense gratitude),
Jordana
