Gratitude

Shut Up and Be Grateful by Mark Manson. For decades, research has tied gratefulness and appreciation to happiness. People who are happier tend to be more grateful and appreciative for what they have. But what they’ve also found is that it also works the other way around: consciously practicing gratitude makes one happier.¹ It makes one appreciate what one has and helps one to remain in the present moment. Practicing gratitude increases accountability which directly leads to higher self-esteem and happiness. Not to mention it makes one more pleasant to be around and creates a more magnetic personality.

Gratitude Comes From Noticing Your Life, Not From Thinking About It (raptitude.com). As you might have noticed, simply making the case to ourselves that we have reasons to feel grateful doesn’t necessarily make us feel grateful. Gratitude, when we do genuinely feel it, arises from experiences we are currently having, not from evaluating our lives in our heads. When you feel lonely, for example, simply remembering that you have friends is a dull, nominal comfort compared to how wonderful it feels when one of those friends calls you out of the blue. Reflecting on the good fortune of having a fixed address is nice, but stepping inside your front door after a cold and rainy walk home is sublime. 

The most powerful thank-you notes don’t come the next day (qz.com). If you’ve just interviewed for a job, attended a party, or received a generous gift, you should express gratitude the next day, or soon after. Forgetting to do so could seem rude, or cost you the job opportunity. But according to organizational psychologist Adam Grant, when people enhance your life via non-material gifts and informal interactions—mentorship, career advice, networking, informational meetings—it’s more powerful to express gratitude weeks, or even months, later.

This Holiday Season, Spend on Doing Rather Than Having (scientificamerican.com). This work focuses on the distinction between experiential purchases (money spent on doing, like on travel, tickets to performances, and fees to visit museums or nature preserves) and material purchases (money spent on having, like on clothing, jewelry, furniture, and electronic gadgets). We have found that people tend to be happier when they invest in experiences because experiential purchases connect people to one another, enhance their sense of self, and, relative to material consumption, tend to be appreciated for their intrinsic value rather than how they compare to what others have.

Beat Generosity Burnout (HBR). It was about how generous “givers” succeed in ways that lift others up instead of cutting them down. It turned out that givers add more value to organizations than selfish “takers” or quid pro quo “matchers” do…Although givers are the most valuable people in organizations, they’re also at the greatest risk for burnout. When they don’t protect themselves, their investments in others can cause them to feel overloaded and fatigued, fall behind on their work goals, and face more stress and conflict at home.

How Two Words Can Change Your Life by Darius Foroux. The reality is that we, humans, are ungrateful idiots. Always have been…Why do we always desire what we don’t have? Desiring things you don’t have is not necessarily a bad thing…But when I read about historical figures such as Christopher Columbus, the Wright Brothers, or Nikola Tesla, they used that desire for good things. They didn’t complain and had an innate desire to achieve things.

How To Be A Kind Human Being by Darius Foroux. Yes, you’re awesome. But you don’t have to take every opportunity to prove it to others. Every time you correct someone, try to make a point when people already get it, or behave in another annoying way, you’re engaging in a pissing contest. Go ahead and piss all you want. No one’s going to like you any better other than yourself. And we all know that ‘me, myself, and I’ is not a good strategy.

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