Gratitude is the Shortcut to Happiness
On the contrary, many studies have proven that the incidence of anxiety and depression is increasing worldwide, and the average age of the first onset of depression is decreasing. There are more and more children suffering from depression!
What Is Happening in This Situation?
Research by psychologists Brickman and Campbell found that lottery winners will experience a sharp increase in happiness when they first learn they have won, but this does not last forever. After about 18 months, their happiness will fall back to the Previous level of winning.
These two psychologists proposed the concept of the “Hedonic Treadmill” (also called “hedonic adaptation”), which is a metaphor that humans work tirelessly for their happiness, but overall, their happiness levels do not change much.
When a good thing happens, such as getting admitted to an ideal university, our happiness will rise in the short term, but the happiness this good thing brings to us will gradually be adapted to us, and our happiness will gradually fall back to the “baseline level” “. At the same time, our expectations have increased. We will expect more and greater good things to come, otherwise we will not be happy easily and may even be disappointed.
Of course, if you are admitted to your ideal university, a series of subsequent good things such as appreciation from others, a superior learning environment, and a smooth job search experience will increase your happiness, but this happiness will also gradually decline as we adapt, and your expectations will rise.
Here’s the bad news: Humans adapt more easily to good things than to bad things. Moreover, the human brain is instinctively more sensitive to pain than to pleasure, and to loss than to gain—the pain of accidentally dropping an ice cream on the ground is greater than the joy of getting an ice cream for free. This is why many people find it difficult to move on from grief after experiencing a traumatic event or find it difficult to be as happy as before.
Of course, from a social perspective, other factors also affect happiness, such as comparisons between people, such as social fairness and justice. Here we only talk about the individual level.
What Are the Reasons for Showing Gratitude?
It is not difficult to see from the process of “hedonic adaptation” that to maintain a high level of happiness, more and greater good things must continue to happen. Due to the limitations of many objective factors, this is unrealistic.
You should also note two factors that influence our happiness:
- It is our increasing expectations after encountering good things, which means that we will gradually take the occurrence of good things as a matter of course (due to the change of reference, the original good things become routine things);
- It’s our brain’s natural tendency to focus too much on the bad.
What can we do about these two factors?
Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, places great emphasis on the impact of “gratitude” on happiness. His research has found that practicing gratitude is a simple and easy way to continuously improve happiness. In fact, many scholars later proved that practicing gratitude can resist depression, anxiety, and other negative emotions and maintain mental health.
- Gratitude works because it focuses our attention on the good things that happen in our lives, reminds us not to take all good things for granted, and to manage expectations appropriately.
- Gratitude draws our attention to what we have, helps us see our resources and strengths, and increases self-acceptance.
- Gratitude allows us to see the positive side of things and face difficulties with more confidence.
Better Relationships Through Gratitude
Good interpersonal relationships depend on the satisfaction of each other’s psychological needs, and people generally have two important psychological needs: one is the need for a sense of competence, which is a feeling of “I am capable”; the other is the need to establish relationships with others.
When you express gratitude to others, they will feel that they are capable of helping others and that they are worthy of being appreciated. In other words, when you express gratitude, you simultaneously satisfy the other person’s psychological needs for a sense of competence and connection. From another perspective, gratitude makes us more willing to repay others and produce altruistic behaviors, which also helps maintain good interpersonal relationships.
Does Academic Performance Correlate with Gratitude?
The broadening and constructing theory believes that gratitude, as a positive emotion, can broaden an individual’s intellectual resources and enhance cognitive flexibility.
Simply put, the function of negative emotions is to avoid harm, and the function of positive emotions is to seek benefits. When we experience positive emotions, our minds become more open and creative, making it easier to analyze problems from different perspectives. Cognitive flexibility not only helps improve learning efficiency but also makes us more resilient in the face of setbacks and challenges.
Gratitude Is Not Self-Blame and Guilt
You may have seen this kind of “gratitude education”: the host on the stage tells about the hardships and sacrifices of the parents, and the parents and children in the audience hug each other and cry together.
This kind of “gratitude” is accompanied by belittling oneself, which makes people feel self-blame and guilt because its logic is “I am not good enough and I am sorry for your efforts” or “I am not good enough to accept your gift.” “In this way, the other party’s contribution adds a heavy burden to oneself. This defeats the purpose of achieving happiness through gratitude.
“Gratitude” in positive psychology emphasizes gratitude and appreciation for the good things that happen to you, and understanding contentment. This is a feeling of joy and peace that does not need to be accompanied by feelings of self-blame and guilt.
Ways to Show Gratitude
The reason why gratitude is a shortcut to happiness is because the positive emotion of gratitude is easy to obtain, and persisting in simple exercises can continuously improve your happiness. Seligman suggests two ways to practice gratitude.
Diary of good things
- Please prepare a gratitude journal.
- You can find a specific time every week to record at least 3 good things that happened this week, write down the reasons and processes for these things, and your feelings. Of course, you don’t necessarily need to complete this exercise at a specific time. If you experience a feeling of gratitude, you can also record it at that time.
- Most things may be relatively trivial. For example, I will write “Thank my parents for sending me the beef brisket and frying the spices…”. Of course, I can also thank myself, such as “Thank you for my focus and hard work. I finished writing this article…”. It is these small daily blessings that become an inexhaustible source of happiness.
- You can keep changing your perspective to find things to be grateful for. You can write one or two hundred words for each thing, but don’t be strict with the number of words or writing style. The most important thing is to persist in completing it.
Grateful visit
Think of someone you know who is alive and think of the good things their presence has brought to your life. Please write a thank you letter to him, in which you specifically review the wonderful memories he has brought to you and describe your feelings. Then, find a time to meet with him, read the contents of the letter to him, and exchange your thoughts with him.
Maybe you feel a little awkward reading a thank-you letter in person, but that’s okay. You can write a thank-you letter first but don’t tell him about the letter. When you meet, you can express your gratitude to him in another way – of course, expressing gratitude in person should be as sincere and specific as in a letter.
Humanity has invented enough things to make us happy, but the essence of happiness lies in the way we experience the world internally.