# On Becoming Grateful ![[Assets/749d415fe96292a6a0565d539257538a_MD5.jpg]] ## Metadata - Author: [[bulletjournal.com]] - Full Title: On Becoming Grateful - Category: #articles - URL: https://www.inoreader.com/article/3a9c6e77d375dced-on-becoming-grateful ## Highlights - There are those who see the glass as half full. There are those who see the glass as half empty. Then there are those - like her - who see a full glass and experience it as being empty. - No matter how wealthy, healthy, loved, beautiful, or lucky you are, or may become, it won’t matter unless you're a grateful person. The problem is, most of us are not. - There is however a difference between experiencing gratitude, and being a grateful person. - As a species, we’re wired to focus on things that pose a potential threat. This is known as our negativity bias. It’s what allowed our ancestors to stay off the menu. It’s an ancient warning system on a hair trigger. In modern times, we’re flooded by news intentionally designed to trigger us. We’re made relentlessly aware of misfortune on a global scale. We’re simply not equipped to effectively process that much information, let alone negative information. Yet, we can't help ourselves but to keep looking. Moths to a flame. The more we look for it, the more we find. - Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. If those beliefs are driven by fear, life will continue to provide evidence of how menacing the world is. If those beliefs are driven by anger, life will provide evidence how unjust the world is. To make matters worse, we live in an age where it's effortless to find evidence to confirm any belief, even if it's false, even if it poisons us. - The grateful see a full glass, and are thankful. The ungrateful see a full glass, and are indifferent or oblivious. The antigrateful will also see a full glass, and are resentful. As opposed to seeing the good or bad in things, antigratitude is seeing the positive as negative. It's what happens when the negativity bias metastasizes, gradually trapping its host in a state of perpetual pathological pessimism. - The difference between a grateful and an ungrateful person isn't attitude, or character, or kindness. It's awareness. Whether it's due to indifference or obliviousness, the ungrateful simply aren't aware of the good. That's why they suffer more. The more they suffer, the more they risk becoming antigrateful. - The goal of a gratitude practice isn't to make you a happier person; it's to help you become a more perceptive one. - One way is to keep S.C.O.R.E.. It stands for: Sincerity, Consistency, Originality, Reflection, and Expression. Keeping S.C.O.R.E. is the strategy I've developed in response to the frustrations I've had with popular gratitude practices. - Keeping S.C.O.R.E begins by keeping a journal. In that journal you can write whatever you want as long as it includes an ongoing record of the things you're grateful for. - That's the beauty of your practice, it's personal. You decide what matters. That phonemail, that cup of coffee, that victory, that touch, that word: no matter how big or small, selfish or selfless it is, if it resonates, if you feel it, don't judge, write it down. It's as valid as anything you "should" be grateful for. - Trying to redirect our attention towards the positive will be met with resistance. It's engaging with that resistance consistently that forms the core of an effective gratitude practice. - If you’re not capturing things consistently, progress can be so slow that it's outweighed by the effort the practice demands. You risk losing your motivation to maintain it. - Write down one thing you're grateful for today. One sentence. That's it. It won't exorcise all your demons, but it will move you one step toward becoming a more grateful person: a person not immune to suffering, but also not consumed by it. To stay on that path, just keep taking steps. Write down another thing tomorrow, and the next day. Once you've done that most days for a month, increase the weight by one. Record two things you're grateful for every day. For context, I worked up to three, but found that I stopped doing it, so I went back to two, with an added layer of reflection. I've done that most days for years. With just two entries most days, I'm left with hundreds of accounts of joy in my life. As we'll see, that record becomes a powerful resource for various parts of our practice. - Next to authenticity, the most powerful tactic I've developed in my own gratitude practice is this rule: avoid writing down the same thing twice. To be clear, it's not that you can't ever be grateful for the same thing, you just have to find something new about why that experience stood out. This rule helps to switch off our natural autopilot and forces us to pay much closer attention to both the familiar and the unfamiliar alike. That's where the practice really begins. - No two moments are identical. Each moment is the first and last of its kind. Through practice we begin to see - if not appreciate - the way they differ. Once you've experienced finding the originality of a moment through practice, your awareness changes. You realize that what you can discover in each moment to nourish you is limited only by your ability to perceive it. - The more you look for original good, the more you flex your perception, the more sensitive you become. - Studies conducted by neuroscientist Alex Korb at UCLA found "Once you start seeing things to be grateful for, your brain starts looking for more things to be grateful for.." - Our practice can give one bright moment many lives. The first life is the experience itself. The second life is when we memorialize it by recording it on paper. Then there are the times we can relive the experience by reflecting on that record. - We spend a lot of our life waiting to be happy. Our happiness is often contingent on some future qualification: When we make this much money, find this person, buy that house, only then will we be happy. Of course this is rarely the case. These misguided expectations pave the roads leading to disappointment, suffering, and, ultimately antigratitude. - When we’re in a darker season, reflection can help reduce the amount, or duration of our suffering. As they say: pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. That choice is how much of our lives we allow our pain to consume. We easily forget that choice because of how distracted and convinced we are by some toxic narrative: - Suffering is in large part caused by our inability to see beyond our pain. Reflecting on the things we’re grateful for can provide a critical ingredient to support the healing process: perspective. - Through reflection we are reminded of the good, and - just as importantly - its source. Our gratitude log will quickly reveal that much of the things we're grateful for come from external sources. It is the world around us that has gifted us these experiences, these people, these golden moments. This awareness can help us maintain a much more resourceful and hopeful picture of the world. It encourages us to engage with it, rather than to run from it. - A study conducted at University of North Carolina breaks verbal thanks into two different types: "other-praising" and "self-benefiting." Other-praising is about highlighting the giver like “This just goes to show how thoughtful you are” or "You're so talented" whereas self-benefitting is about highlighting yourself like “That makes me happy.” or "I'm so relieved." - relieved."  The study found that "other-praising gratitude was strongly related to perceptions of responsiveness, positive emotion, and loving — but self-benefit gratitude was not." - Simply by pointing out someone else's virtues, we can experience even more gratitude, closeness, and motivate them to shine brighter. - We're taught to give without remembering and receive without forgetting. Studies suggest that this isn’t the case. When it comes to gratitude, everything you've done for others is noteworthy. Researchers Adam Grant and Jane Dutton found that reflecting on the gifts we give, has a stronger impact on our wellbeing than reflecting on the gifts we receive. What's even more interesting is the effect reflecting on giving - rather than receiving - had on the test subjects. - Giving thanks is such a common human interaction. With just a little bit more awareness, it seemingly has the potential to be so much more. These studies suggest that the aware expression of gratitude, positively influences not only the mood, but also the behavior of both parties. Feeling grateful inspires positive action, which makes others grateful and take positive action. It's a virtuous cycle. - Get a notebook. Write down one original thing every day that you're sincerely grateful for. This can be something you received, or something that you gave. Each week, take time to reflect on the things you've written down. If you see an opportunity to thank somebody for something you're grateful for, be sure to do so. Add a Task in your Bullet Journal so you don't forget. Once you've taken the action, you can use it as that day's gratitude entry. - If you don't keep it up, don't despair. Begin again. Experiment with your intervals until you find something you can comfortably sustain. Find a way to keep showing up, and give yourself permission to figure out what does not work for you.