Benefits of Gratitude

Rational Ignorance Podcast - Benefits Of Gratitude - Transcript

Craig 00:11 

Hi, folks. This is Craig Van Slyke. Welcome to the Rational Ignorance podcast, where we talk about ideas, values, and living life well. 

Andrea 00:15 

Hi, I'm Andrea Christelle, a philosopher and outdoor enthusiast who lives in Sedona, Arizona. 

Craig 00:21 

And I'm a business professor, author and rancher who lives in the middle of the woods in Eros, Louisiana. We're here to help you live an excellent life, a flourishing life.

Andrea 00:30 

Flourishing means not only living according to virtue and reason, but also living a life that includes the things that enrich our existence, such as friendship, health, creativity, pleasure and a connection to and appreciation for the natural world. We will explore what it means to have a flourishing life.

Craig 00:59 

In the last episode I talked about the relationship between grief and gratitude and stated that gratitude is an important part of living a good life. In this episode, I dig into why this is so and provide some methods for building gratitude into your life. My ideas aren't new, Cicero called gratitude not only the greatest, but also the parent of all other virtues, and even today many modern psychologists believe that gratitude is one of the most important factors influencing life satisfaction and happiness. So how does gratitude help us live a flourishing life? Well, here's my high-level view. Gratitude is an integral part of living well because it helps us focus on what's good about life, not what's bad, and this makes us happier. This seems pretty simple almost to the point of being trite, but trust me, being a grateful person is central to living an excellent life.

Craig 01:49 

Let me lay out my little argument step by step. Flourishing requires happiness, gratefulness is an important determinant of happiness, so by extension gratefulness helps us flourish. It's just that simple. Okay. So then what then does it take to make us feel grateful? Well, first you need to receive some sort of benefit from someone and you need to be aware of that benefit. Second, you need to believe that the other person intended to bestow that benefit. Now let's say for example, you're in heavy traffic and need to move over a lane and someone stops and waves you over. You'll feel grateful. But if there's some idiot staring at their phone and they leave a gap kind of inadvertently, you might feel lucky, but you probably wouldn't feel grateful towards that idiot, I mean, towards that person, we'll be nice here. We're also more inclined to feel grateful when we believe that our benefactor bestowed the benefit without a sense of personal gain. In other words, when there's no expectation of a return favor. Let's break things down a little bit so we can better understand what happens when we feel or express gratitude.

Craig 02:50 

First thing to understand is that gratitude can be an emotional reaction, such as I'm grateful to my wife for surprising me with a yummy yogurt covered pretzels, which just happens to be one of my favorite indulgences. Yes, my life is just that boring. Gratitude can also be a disposition as in Tracy is a grateful person. Both of these are important. The practice of the former leads to the latter. You become a grateful person by practicing gratitude. Gratitude can also be expressed or silent. Consciously thinking about the things you're grateful for is silent gratitude while writing a thank you note as expressed gratitude. These are both beneficial, but in different ways. Silent gratitude can bring all sorts of personal benefits as I'll discuss shortly. While expressing gratitude is important socially, research in psychology tells us that there are many benefits from practicing gratitude -- better physical health, increased happiness and well-being, improved relationships, better coping with stress, and more. Being more grateful focuses our thoughts on the positive aspects of life, which increases our happiness. Andrea and I discussed this at some length in episode 16 - Overcoming Negativity Bias, if you wanna hear more.

Craig 04:01 

It's important to understand that we determine our own happiness. To quote Shakespeare, “‘tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.” Or if you prefer the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius wrote, “The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.” By focusing our thoughts on the good in life, gratefulness improves the quality of our thoughts, or at least the nature of our thoughts, which helps us view the world as a better place. Yeah, I know, there are many bad things in the world, and we all experience those, but we shouldn’t forget the good. Gratefulness helps us keep the good in the forefront of our minds. The way I look at it it’s pretty hard to be grateful and unhappy at the same time. We shouldn't discount the value of happiness. In fact, we can argue that happiness is the central purpose of human existence. Especially if we define happiness as an enduring happiness, rather than a brief transitory sense of pleasure.

Craig 04:53 

So increasing our happiness is central to flourishing as humans. Since gratitude can increase happiness, by extension gratitude is also an important path towards flourishing. I know I kind of said this earlier, but I want to make sure I make this point and in a strong way. Let's look at a few benefits of gratitude in some detail. Gratitude can help us cope with stress. Look, let's face it, life is full of gains and losses. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Or as one of my favorite country songs says, "Sometimes you're the windshield. Sometimes you're the book." Developing gratitude builds a store of positive thoughts by reminding us of the gains, which can help us reduce the focus on our losses.

Similarly gratitude may help make us more resilient to the inevitable difficulties of life. Gratitude can also reduce the tendency for social comparison, which is just comparing our lives to those of others. These comparisons often lead to envy, resentment, and regret. In other words, social comparisons can make us feel bad in a variety of ways.

Craig 05:55 

Gratitude helps us focus on the benevolence of others, which in turn helps us appreciate the good that is in others, which makes it pretty tough to feel envious or resentful towards those others. I feel like I'm saying “others” a lot. Instead when you become a grateful person, you feel happy over somebody else's good fortune. One author compared being dispositionally grateful, or being a grateful person as acting as a sort of firewall against incapacitating regrets, because a grateful person focuses on the favorable aspects of life instead of the regrettable. A sense of gratitude may also help make you a more moral person. A disposition towards gratitude reminds you of the good in others, which motivates you towards moral behavior since you recognize how your actions can affect others.

Craig 06:42 

A sense of gratitude may also help make you a more moral person. A disposition towards gratitude reminds you of the good and other people, which motivates you towards moral behavior, since you recognize how your actions can affect others. Gratitude reminds you that you don't live in a vacuum. Others' actions affect you and your actions affect others. When you feel a sense of gratefulness, it reminds you that you have the capacity to improve the lives of others. Someone else made you feel good, that's why you're grateful, so you're motivated to make others feel good, which in turn will make you feel even better.

There's also a pragmatic sort of non psychological benefit to expressing gratitude. When you express gratitude towards someone, you increase the chance that the other person will grant you future favors. Ask yourself, don't you feel more inclined to do something nice for someone who makes it a point to thank you? This just seemed kind of natural to me. I'm not saying that you should only express gratitude in order to secure some future benefits, but I am saying that this is an additional benefit of telling someone thank you. 

Craig 07:53 

In any case, even if you don't get favors in the future, at least you made the other person feel a little bit better. Gratitude is also important socially. Gratitude encourages benevolent acts by providing a sort of payment for the benevolent act, as I just mentioned. When someone is grateful towards you, your mood elevates. You feel better, almost immediately. Since most of us like feeling good, this process motivates us to further benevolence. Although doing good in stealth is certainly a worthy endeavor, for most of us even a small expression of gratitude makes us more likely to do good for others in the future. Expressing gratitude is also part of a virtuous cycle. Someone does you a favor, you express gratitude, that encourages the other person to perform further good acts, which leads to further gratitude and the cycle continues. Failing to express gratitude may stop the cycle of good acts. So not just feeling grateful, but expressing that gratefulness is doubly important. We can also view gratitude as an expression of a sort of justice. When someone thanks you for a good act, you reap a reward, their expression of gratitude and the good feelings it brings. This can be viewed as a good act in itself since they took the time to communicate their gratitude. So your good act is rewarded with another good act. 

Craig 09:16 

Although our own happiness is reason enough to become a grateful person, we shouldn't discount gratitude's social benefits. I don't care how much of a lone wolf someone might think they are, everyone, and I mean, everyone is connected to others. Gratitude, by reminding us of how others affect us, reminds us that we're all part of a larger whole. And although we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness and flourishing, we are all affected by and have an effect on others. To quote one of my favorite stoics, Seneca, "You must live for your neighbor if you would live for yourself." So even if you don't care about the personal benefits of gratitude, express your gratitude for the benefit of others.

Craig 10:03 

Hopefully, I've convinced you to try to develop a disposition towards gratitude. If not, well, I guess I don't know what else to say other than, sorry. If you are ready to become more grateful, let's get into how to move towards making gratitude a part of your being. Before getting into the specifics, let's remember that practice builds habit and habit leads to being. If you want to make gratitude part of who you are, start by consciously practicing gratitude. Eventually gratitude will become a habit, and then part of who you are, part of your being. Before going further, I want to touch on the habit bit of this progression, which kind of bothered me when I first started thinking about the practice habit being processed with respect to gratitude. Normally we think of habit as being something we do without conscious thought. We just do that thing reflexively. So you might think that building a habit of gratitude might lead to a sort of disingenuous reflex of uttering thank you for every little thing. I don't think that's really gratitude. 

Craig 11:08 

To build a great habit of gratitude, you need to habitually recognize when others intentionally act in ways that benefit you and when it doesn't hold any real direct benefit for them, and you must feel grateful. So the recognition and feeling are what become habitual, not just the muttering of some meaningless words of thanks. Of course, if you feel grateful, you're more likely to express that feeling by thanking someone. That's a good thing. Okay, enough of that. Let's talk about how to build a practice of gratitude. There are many ways to do this, if you don't believe me, do a web search for gratitude intervention, there are a ton of them. My approach is based on three steps, awareness, expression, and reflection. So here are three things that you can do this week that will help gratefulness become a part of who you are. 

Craig 12:00 

First, we need to practice being aware of the many things others do for us each day. Whether you realize it or not, others often act in ways that benefit us. It might be holding open a door for you when you have your arms full, stepping aside so you can pass in a crowded hallway, waving you through at a four way stop sign. For my non-US listeners, we sometimes have these instead of roundabouts. Or letting you ahead of them in a checkout line when they have a basket full of products and you only have two things. Often we either don't notice these acts of kindness or when we do the impression doesn't last very long. So the first step is simply to be more aware of what goes on around you and to take note of benevolent acts. Here's what I want you to do: each time you notice one of these acts of kindness, pause your thoughts for a few seconds and remember the details of the encounter and the act. Really trying to remember the context in which it occurred, what was going on, all those little details that we usually just filter out. Doing this will make the act more salient and will help you remember it for a longer period of time.

Craig 13:08 

Second, make it a practice to express your gratitude more regularly. Expressing gratitude leads to greater awareness. Each day, make it a point to communicate your gratitude to someone who unselfishly benefited you. Their benevolence might've been recent or long ago, either way your thankfulness will make them, and you feel better. In addition, this practice will help you become more aware of others' acts of kindness towards you. It doesn't really matter what communication medium you use. You can call, you can text, you can write, you can email, whatever seems appropriate is fine. I encourage you to put this on your daily schedule, or actually put it on your calendar, 3:34 o'clock thank someone or whatever time works for you. Third, at the end of each day, take a few minutes to reflect on how the actions of others benefited you during that day. You're the journaling type? Write these incidents in your journal. If not, just pause and focus on the encounters on how they made you feel and how you reacted.

Craig 14:10 

Did you feel grateful at the time? Did you bother to express your gratitude? Don't be judgmental here, don't get all judgy on yourself, just reflect. Well, that's all for now. Remember, the world can be a big, old, scary place, recognize and be grateful for the folks that helped you make it through life, even if it's just in some small way. Before closing out this episode, I want to express my gratitude that you took the time to listen to my thoughts. Let me leave you with one of my favorite quotes. This is one I try to keep in mind. You might not be shocked to know what's from a stoic, Marcus Aurelius again, "When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." Be well, my friends. Thank you.

Craig 14:56 

The Rational Ignorance podcast is sponsored by Sedona Philosophy, a completely unique tour company that uses Sedona's amazing natural environment to unlock personal growth and insight. Explore nature, culture and history with a philosophical twist, visit sedonaphilosophy.com to learn more. 

Andrea 15:12 

Thanks Craig. If you enjoyed this podcast, hit the subscribe button, please rate, review and tell your friends. Until next time.