Thursday, February 15, 2018

Practicing Gratitude, Part II

This second post on practicing gratitude, as suggested by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, includes my responses to what the Center recommends to maintain the practice.

These comments, in bold, are based on my 30 years of teaching journal writing in both academic and adult ed venues.

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TIME REQUIRED
15 minutes per day, at least once per week for at least two weeks. Studies suggest that writing in a gratitude journal three times per week might actually have a greater impact on our happiness than journaling every day.

Comment #1:
I’d suggest writing three times a week and putting those days and times on your calendar. Of course, the days and times might vary each week, and that’s fine.

Plan to write between 10 – 20 minutes each time. You can always write for a longer time, but I'd maintain the minimum of 10 minutes.

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HOW TO DO IT
There’s no wrong way to keep a gratitude journal, but here are some general instructions as you get started.

Comment #2:
There are more and less productive ways to keep a journal. Especially for new and/or blocked journal writers, using certain techniques might help make the process more meaningful and worthwhile--especially when confronting a blank page. 

Such techniques might include freewriting; the monologue; and the dialogue.

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Write down up to five things for which you feel grateful.

Comment #3:
I’m not sure you need a maximum or minimum number of things to be grateful for. One day you might have three, and another day 20. I’d be open to whatever number naturally comes up.

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The physical record is important—don’t just do this exercise in your head. The things you list can be relatively small in importance (“The tasty sandwich I had for lunch today.”) or relatively large (“My sister gave birth to a healthy baby boy.”). The goal of the exercise is to remember a good event, experience, person, or thing in your life—then enjoy the good emotions that come with it.

Comment #4:
Absolutely agree about the physical act of writing vs. thinking.

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As you write, here are nine important tips:

Be as specific as possible—specificity is key to fostering gratitude. “I’m grateful that my co-workers brought me soup when I was sick on Tuesday” will be more effective than “I’m grateful for my co-workers.”

Comment #5:
I’d be even more specific: what are the co-workers’ names? What kind of soup? What were you sick with?

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Go for depth over breadth. Elaborating in detail about a particular person or thing for which you’re grateful carries more benefits than a superficial list of many things.

Comment #6:
In other words, tell the story of the experience that you’re grateful, including the person’s name, the day/date, the place, etc.


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Get personal. Focusing on people to whom you are grateful has more of an impact than focusing on things for which you are grateful.

Comment #7:
Again, people usually do certain things that make us grateful, i.e., they act in a certain way. So describe the who, what, when, and where of those actions.


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Try subtraction, not just addition. Consider what your life would be like without certain people or things, rather than just tallying up all the good stuff. Be grateful for the negative outcomes you avoided, escaped, prevented, or turned into something positive—try not to take that good fortune for granted.

Comment #8:
The idea of taking a negative in our lives and turning it into something positive puts me in mind of this quote from the Dalai Lama in The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World: “the three factors that seem to have the greatest influence on increasing our happiness are our ability to reframe our situation more positively, our ability to experience gratitude, and our choice to be kind and generous.”

Reframe, from the online Cambridge dictionary: “to change the way something is expressed or considered.” So we take a negative event and reframe it such that we squeeze something positive from it. Much like making lemonade from lemons, eh?

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See good things as “gifts.” Thinking of the good things in your life as gifts guards against taking them for granted. Try to relish and savor the gifts you’ve received.

Comment #9:
Agree.

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Savor surprises. Try to record events that were unexpected or surprising, as these tend to elicit stronger levels of gratitude.

Comment #10:
I’m not sure this is different from the first tip; once you are specific, you can include the fact that the event was unexpected or surprising.


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Revise if you repeat. Writing about some of the same people and things is OK, but zero in on a different aspect in detail.

Comment #11:
Well, sure.

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Write regularly. Whether you write every other day or once a week, commit to a regular time to journal, then honor that commitment. But…

Don’t overdo it. Evidence suggests writing occasionally (1-3 times per week) is more beneficial than daily journaling. That might be because we adapt to positive events and can soon become numb to them—that’s why it helps to savor surprises.

Comment #12:
See Comment #1 above.


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And if anyone wants to contact me about their experience of keeping a gratitude journal, please do so at madmoon55@hotmail.com. I'd love to hear from you.



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