Give Thanks
We all want our lives to be full of wonderful things and to be happy.
So, we go about trying to add good things to our lives. We strive in school. We work towards great careers. We make ambitious goals. And we often tell ourselves, “Once I get there, or once I get that, THEN I’ll be happy.” But is that true?
Because, let’s be honest, if those things did make us happy, then Ebenezeer Scrooge would be a happy man! Yet he’s one of the most cantankerous characters ever written! And we have enough real life scrooges that we can easily picture it.
So why do we add more to what we want in an attempt to be happier?
Arthur Brooks, one of my favorite experts on happiness, describes it like this – mother nature (or in other words our biology/physiology) wants us to survive. And so, as we diminish things that are potential threats to our survival – we feel good for a time.
This is why, when we first start making money, it feels amazing because we’ve increased our chances of survival. And your biology acknowledges it. You get a little high five of dopamine.
But once that threat level has been mitigated… if you continue to increase the thing that initially helped – a nicer home, a higher salary, better toys - the return on the feelings for those things drops drastically. This is because the excess doesn’t necessarily help your chances of survival.
As Arthur Brooks says it, Mother nature cares about our survival – but she doesn’t give one fig about our happiness. Surviving and thriving are not the same thing.
You see lasting happiness is less about what we acquire and more about what we acknowledge.
Our brains are more flexible than you may realize – it’s known as neuroplasticity and your brain is consistently building new neuropathways every day. And it builds those pathways based on what you repeat…
It’s like when hiking, if you find a trail that’s not often used, it can be hard to navigate. But the more a trail gets used, the wider and more distinct it becomes. Sometimes, it will get popular enough that people will even pave the trail and make it literally concrete…
Your brain works the same way. The paths you take with it are the ones that will become concrete.
Notice, it is not the circumstance that brings the attitude. Nope, that part is up to you.
How do we build better pathways?
First, I think it’s good to acknowledge that Mother nature starts us out with a negativity bias. This is how our brain thinks it’s helping us survive -it’s always scanning for threats. Our default mode is to look for the bad. So, that pathway is always there. But it’s not until we feed that negativity with our attention over and over again, that we walk the pathway enough to make it concrete.
Good news, that’s not the only pathway we can take.
You see, gratitude is a superpower. – no other behavior can help you build better paths faster. If you want to see more good things in your life, you must actively practice walking the path of seeing good things. Where you put your attention is how you choose which neuropathway to walk.
Using gratitude to tune your attention is how you activate its superpower.
Gratitude helps us feel good. Inside. Scientifically, it’s proven to increase positive feelings because it increases our attention to the good things that are in our lives.
And there are always good things in your life – you just don’t always notice them.
So literally, if you want to feel better? Find things to say thank you to!
But gratitude is about more than just feeling good.
Science shows that people who express gratitude attract healthier relationships, engage in more pro-social behavior (meaning you become a better person), and they receive more beneficial things from others in the future.
This makes sense, in general, gratitude makes us feel happy – and as humans, we tend to be attracted to happy people. Hello friends!
Additionally, when we feel gratitude for another person, we are more likely to help that person in the future (which means we’re becoming a better person) while we forge friendships with them.
Also, expressing gratitude to others often leads them to do more beneficial things for you in the future.
Actively practicing gratitude helps you see more good things AND it attracts more good things to you.
So, I’m grateful for a day set aside a day each year where I’ll not only eat food and fight with family, but will also practice building the pathways that help me see the good things and bring more good things to us all.
Thanks for reading with me today. I hope you find many opportunities to give thanks this week.
