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Four Ways to Be Grateful—And Happier

Four takeaways:

• Gratitude has been shown in study after study to have positive effects on one’s happiness in both the immediate and the long term.
• However, humans naturally have a “negativity bias,” an evolved tendency to focus more on adverse events than on positive ones. So, to practice and reinforce gratitude means working against our natural impulses—much like getting off the couch and lifting weights.
• Four ways one can increase their own sense of gratitude are:
  1. Make thankfulness an interior discipline: Writing down the good things in your life and then making a habit of checking the list has been identified as a tool that may reduce depressive symptoms.
  2. Make it an outward expression: Research has shown that expressing gratitude to others, whether in person or in a thank you note, has an even greater positive effect than privately listing the things you are thankful for.
  3. Make it a sacred duty: George Washington noted that “Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected,” in 1789. To look at gratitude as a moral duty gives it a sense of purpose in your life. This can enhance gratitude’s effects.
  4. Make it into words of worship: Even if you are not traditionally spiritual, committing to a practice of mantra or meditation that centers gratitude will help incorporate it into the way you relate to the world around you.

From Arthur C. Brooks at The Atlantic:
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