Using Gratitude to Make Yourself a Better Person
Leveraging a simple emotion for powerful results.
I am reading a very good book; Emotional Success, the Power of Gratitude, Compassion and Pride, by David DeStefano. I have just finished the first section on the power of Gratitude.
This really resonated with me.
I have lived through my share of stressful situations and self-improvement pogroms and I wish I knew this science earlier. What he talks about, how studies show the correlative (and maybe causative) impact of fostering an attitude of gratitude, would have been a big help to the 20 or 30-year-old me.
As a baby-boomer I grew up with the hard-work and self-control mantra. Discipline and good habits could turn any situation around. I focused on being prepared, working harder and beating myself up for failing at it. Sound familiar?
Much of the pop-science around self-improvement through the 80’s and 90’s and 00’s was focused on how to create habits and essentially trick yourself into doing things that had a positive effect. Get up earlier. Do 100 pushups a day. Envision your perfect future. Visualize success.
The challenge with all this stuff is that it isn’t very successful. The reason it isn’t successful is that you’re pushing a rock up a hill. You’re fighting the natural bias of your brain to weigh short term benefit over long term success.
The studies show that on average we will accept $17 today instead of $100 in a year. We are wired to make short-term benefit decisions. Why is that important? Because most of the decisions that determine success are long-term in nature. They require us to pass on an immediate gratification and wait for a delayed reward.
Think about it. I can smoke this cigarette now for the pleasure it gives me even though I know I’m sacrificing years off my life. I can eat the cake now instead of exercising. I can play this video game instead of studying.
Which stinks because the studies also show that the people who naturally weight long term rewards have better self-control and more success. Think of the ‘goal setters’ and the ‘visionaries’. They focus on the future.
This is not a big surprise. Everyone knows or suspects this short-term reward bias. It’s built into our culture.
The traditional approach to breaking the short-term reward bias is to cultivate more willpower. Move the decision out of the emotional brain and into the cognitive brain where we can think about it and make better long-term decisions.
Classic self-improvement speak says “Willpower is a muscle! You have to use it a lot to make it stronger!” There’s some truth to this. Unfortunately, the truth is what the science shows; that yes willpower is like a muscle and fatigues quickly but does not get stronger with use.
That’s why, as rational as it is, you can’t walk away from that greasy pizza at midnight. You have burned out your willpower through a day of making decisions. The cognitive brain is bad at controlling emotional decisions. Emotions always win out eventually.
Why not use emotions to steer the ship instead? Instead of pushing that rock up that hill like some mad Sisyphus battling an unwinnable task?
Enter the wonderful discovery of Gratitude.
Turns out gratitude is an excellent tool to change or positively influence our interactions, our will power and our health.
Gratitude lights up a more fundamental part of our brains. The cognitive brain is bad at making moral decisions and moral decisions drive behavior. The more basic parts of our brains are influenced by emotion and that emotion drives behavior. It resists rationality.
Through a series of experiments gratitude was shown to influence our ability to make long term decisions. To quantify that, David’s own experiments showed that those who were induced into a state of ‘being grateful’ held out to $31 dollars today in exchange for $100 in a year. Still a deep discount, but twice as good as the baseline $17.
People who were grateful also were more willing to perform a difficult task and stayed with those tasks longer – they did a better job, so to speak.
Gratitude in the classroom was correlated to better grades, better study habits and academic success in general.
Gratitude also correlates to physical health. The way this was tested was to have people stand up in front of a room and give a presentation (Oh how many times I’ve been there!). The researchers measured the participants stress responses. Those in a state of gratitude were able to perform better with less stress.
Long-term gratitude corelates with lower blood pressure, good cholesterol and all the other things involved in good health. Gratitude helps you sleep better. Gratitude does a body good.
Gratitude gives us a sense of abundance. We realize all that we have to be thankful for. This makes us more willing to share our talents and resources. This makes us more willing to give back or to share some of our resources with our future self by delaying today’s pleasure.
How do we get gratitude? We can cultivate gratitude by simply reflecting on what we are grateful for – “Counting our Blessings”. This is simply a practice of writing down the small things you are grateful for and reviewing them often. This is the manifestation of ‘the gratitude journal’.
Gratitude can also be given to us by others. When someone does you a small kindness or relieves you from an onerous task you are grateful. With this gratitude comes all the benefits discussed above in some measure.
Think about that. Your sincere smile to the barista this morning may have improved her life.
In summary my friends, if you are trying to get to a better place in your life, if you want to create a better world, stop focusing on willpower and scarcity.
Focus your energy on gratitude and abundance.
What are you grateful for?
Gratitude.
Abundance.
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