If you go to p.107 of the Twelve & Twelve, Bill W makes this provocative claim:
“Life is not be endured or mastered”
Although he doesn’t attempt to answer the question of what life is; I’ve found the words “more fully participated in” an answer that seems consistent with what the NOW of life unceasingly offers when I refrain from attempting to control it through mastery or diminish it by my judgements. I found this reflection on gratitude very helpful in connecting a ‘how to’ practice with this possibility of more fully participating. I also love the relationship she draws between gratitude, appreciation, meaning and connection with this powerful assertion: “Gratitude is an emotion that reflects our deep appreciation for what we value, what brings meaning to our lives, and what makes us feel connected to ourselves and others.” – Bruce M.
There is overwhelming evidence that gratitude is good for us physically, emotionally, and mentally. There’s research that shows that gratitude is correlated with better sleep, increased creativity, decreased entitlement, decreased hostility and aggression, increased decision-making skills, decreased blood pressure—the list goes on. The research is persuasive, and I’ve read countless research articles and books on gratitude, but I still struggled to understand exactly why it helps so much. Until I read this by Robert Emmons.
Emmons is the “world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude.” He is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and the founding editor in chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology. He writes,
Research on emotion shows that positive emotions wear off quickly. Our emotional systems like newness. They like novelty. They like change. We adapt to positive life circumstances so that before too long, the new car, the new spouse, the new house—they don’t feel so new and exciting anymore.
But gratitude makes us appreciate the value of something, and when we appreciate the value of something, we extract more benefits from it; we’re less likely to take it for granted.
In effect, I think gratitude allows us to participate more in life. We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness. We spend so much time watching things—movies, computer screens, sports—but with gratitude we become greater participants in our lives as opposed to spectators.
The two lines that resonate with my research are:
“Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness.”
“We become greater participants in our lives as opposed to spectators.”
The phrase “adapting to goodness” reminds me of a quote I’ve seen all over social media: “Remember the day you prayed for the things you have now.” I normally scroll right past the heavy inspirational quotes, but this one got my attention. I think adapting to goodness without feeling gratitude is a function of scarcity. We either want things for the wrong reasons, then feel disappointed when we acquire them, or we just can’t accumulate enough to feel whole, so we accumulate and adapt, never valuing or appreciating.
And the line about living our lives versus being spectators simply reminds me of how many people I’ve interviewed over the past two decades who talked about simply wanting to feel more alive. Is part of the value of practicing gratitude extending the life of the emotions that make us feel most alive? There are about as many definitions of gratitude as there are researchers, poets, and writers who examine the emotion in their work. Many of the existing research definitions don’t resonate with the way people described their experiences of gratitude to me in interviews or in writing. Here’s what emerged from our work: Gratitude is an emotion that reflects our deep appreciation for what we value, what brings meaning to our lives, and what makes us feel connected to ourselves and others.
While gratitude is an emotion, if we want to experience its full power, we must also make it a practice. Over the past two decades, the research has taught me that, despite the catchy phrase “an attitude of gratitude,” gratitude is a practice. It’s tangible. An attitude is a way of thinking; a practice is a way of doing, trying, failing, and trying again.
The research participants that I interviewed over the years described keeping gratitude journals, doing daily gratitude meditations or prayers, creating gratitude art, using gratitude check-ins with their teams at work, even stopping during their stressful, busy days to actually say these words out loud: “I am grateful for…” In our house, we go around the table at dinner and take turns sharing one gratitude. It’s small, but it’s also big. It gives me a window into the lives of the people I love the most. It’s celebrating goodness.
Last, I want to share something that recently popped up on social media. I posted something about the importance of gratitude and someone left a comment that said they thought gratitude might be overrated as a cure for depression, trauma, and anxiety. What I would say is that gratitude is not a cure for anything and we need to be wary of any single practice or approach that’s sold as fixing or curing complex mental health issues. Gratitude is a practice that can enrich our lives in meaningful ways. In the world of mental health and social emotional learning, the term “cure” feels like snake oil to me.