Okay, so we've talked about the benefits of positive emotion and why positive emotions are so important in helping us to deal with stress and enhance our resilience. Now we're going to talk about one of my favorite positive emotions, which is gratitude. You might remember that I said in the introduction that this is an example of science catching up to grandma, right? I'm guessing almost everyone of you has had someone in your life when you were yea high say to you, look, count your blessings, pay attention to all the goodness around you, maybe it was grandma, maybe it was a coach or a pastor, but we all know at some very basic level that gratitude is a critical part of well being. Noticing what you're receiving from other people in the world is part of what buoys us and keeps us strong. So, I want to talk with you about the research that's been done on the emotion of gratitude. There are lots of different researchers who study gratitude. Dr. Froh, Adam Grant here at Wharton has studied gratitude. And the leader in the field is at UC Davis. His name is Dr. Bob Emmons, and he's probably the person most associated with the science of gratitude. I adore him, he's really helped sharpen my thinking about gratitude. And so if this is a topic that really interests you, I highly recommend his book, conveniently titled, Thanks. Okay, so let's explore what are the benefits of cultivating an attitude of gratitude? Actually, let me just say this before we get into the science. Feeling a pang of gratitude once isn't going to get you very far. What I'm talking about with this science is what are the effects of a sustained practice of gratitude? So let's look at the science. Well, we know that people who cultivate a daily practice of gratitude have better physical and mental health. Now, let's just contrast gratitude for a second with what we were just talking about, catastrophizing. So, catastrophizing, right, is when you're focusing on dangers and threats. And well, not just focusing on them, you're creating dangers and threats. And all that thinking about danger and threat is generating all of that unhealthy level of anxiety. Gratitude is a very different focus. In gratitude, you're not focusing on danger and threat, you're focusing on what you are receiving. What benefits have been coming your way? What goodness is there around you? So that's a very different cognitive frame. So what do we know about what happens when you cultivate a practice of gratitude. There have been a lot of studies. So, one study was done by Dr. Seligman and his graduate student at the time, Tracey Stein. They did this neat online randomized study. So people went online and they were randomly assigned to a couple of different interventions. One was a gratitude intervention. And I'll say a little bit more about that in a sec. Another was what they designed as a placebo control. So in that intervention, the participants were told to journal about early memories. So, you either were journaling about early memories, or you were in this gratitude intervention. And in the gratitude intervention, people were simply told to journal about three good things, three blessings, three positive things that have happened and, and I think this part matters, not just to list those three good things, but to explore, to write about your explanation for why that good thing happened. So journal about early childhood memories, journal about three good things plus your thoughts about why it happened. And they asked people to do that for a week. And then they followed those people and asked them to take a happiness index as well as a measure of symptoms of depression. And what they found is that the people who were in the gratitude intervention showed increases in happiness compared to the folks that were just journaling about childhood memories, and showed decreases in depression six months later. Now, let me just say something. Journaling about gratitude for one week isn't going to lead to decreases in depression for six months, unless you keep up with the activity. So, those decreases in depression and increase in happiness, and well being were not just from a one week intervention. Many of the people who were in that journaling about gratitude condition found it uplifting and so they continued to do it and that led to those longer term effects. Okay, so gratitude increases happiness and can decrease symptoms of depression. By the way, let me just stop and say I'm not suggesting that journaling gratitude invention is a treatment for depression. That is not at all what we're talking about here. Certainly, if someone is struggling with severe symptoms of depression, clinical depression, you need treatment for that and gratitude alone is not going to be the answer. Okay, what else does gratitude do? Well, people who make a practice of gratitude sleep better. Now, I mentioned earlier that sometimes I can have insomnia. I'm guessing many of you have bouts where you're not sleeping great. Let's think about that. I know for myself when I'm struggling with sleep, often what's the precipitant is what's going through my mind as I'm trying to drift off to sleep. And often what's going through my mind is I'm thinking about what I gotta accomplish the next day, worrying about maybe a conversation I had earlier in the day that didn't go well. I'm maybe not catastrophizing, but I'm certainly kind of running through this laundry list of all the to dos I have and things I need to prepare for and so forth. That's really not a great conduit to sleep. Gratitude is the opposite. Gratitude isn't a focus on the threats or the dangers, right? It's a focus on the good things, what you're receiving. So, one way in which gratitude might facilitate sleep is that if while you're lying in bed at night you are mentally rehearsing and thinking about all the good things that have happened that day, that's going to not engage your fight or flight response, it's going to engage more of that rest and digest so that your physiology is more calm, which is going to make sleep easier. Okay, we also know from the research that people who cultivate gratitude have stronger relationships. I think this is a no brainer, right? That if I'm noticing the things that I am grateful for in Guy, or from my children, or in my colleagues, and I'm expressing thanks to those people, that's going to solidify our relationship. That's going to help our relationship be stronger. We also know that gratitude is correlated with stronger faith and spirituality. Now, I think this makes sense as well, that part of viewing the world through the lens of what am I receiving, enables you to feel attached to something larger than yourself. Now, if you remember all the way back to module one when we were talking about what are some of those important variables in resilience, one of the things I mentioned was feeling attached to something larger than yourself. That's actually an important part of what helps people to persist. Gratitude is certainly a way to feel attached to something larger than yourself. If you're walking through the world, noticing the beauty around you, that's going to help you to feel attached to the world, attached to nature, and might bring for you a greater sense of spirituality. Along with that, when you're feeling grateful, you're likely to experience less materialism. That noticing what you have and being grateful for what you already have brings a feeling of contentment. And maybe because of that contentment, your desire to go online and buy more stuff is quieted. How many pairs of shoes do you really need? And so, with a lens of gratitude, what we already have might feel enough, and so our materialism goes down. Materialism goes down, humility goes up with gratitude. Feeling open to and touched by the world. And humility for me, there's this wonderful quote by CS Lewis that I just love, that I think really captures what humility is and also why gratitude might be a conduit to greater humility. So here is CS Lewis' quote: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” Let that simmer for a minute, because that's what gratitude is. Gratitude is not thinking less of yourself, putting yourself down. Gratitude is thinking of others more, opening your perspective to notice from others in the world what you're receiving, okay. We also know that gratitude increases helping behaviors. So, if I express gratitude to my colleagues, they're going to be more likely to help me. In fact, there was a study done by Dr. Adam Grant here at Penn, and he and his colleagues looked at college fundraisers. So these are college students who are helping to fundraise for their institution. And some of those college fundraisers were sincerely, notice the word sincerely, sincerely thanked by their supervisor. So the supervisor went in and thanked them for their effort and time in fundraising. Some of the college students who were fundraising were not sincerely thanked by their supervisor, so that was the intervention condition. And what Grant and his colleagues found was the students who received a sincere expression of gratefulness, of gratitude, from their supervisor made 50% more calls than those who were not thanked. That's a lot more calls. So simply by receiving authentic gratitude, an authentic thank you from their supervisor, motivated those fundraisers to make 50% more calls. Here's another thing. It also has a pay it forward effect. So you've heard that phrase, right? That people who are thanked are not only more likely to help the person who is thanking them, but they're also more likely to help someone else. So, expressions of gratitude lead to more helping behavior for the person who was being thanked, but it also has that pay it forward effect, it's important. Okay, those are some of the benefits that we see in cultivating a practice of gratitude. So again, physical health and mental health and helping behavior, so forth. But I want to not send the signal that gratitude is necessarily easy. Now, my guess is that there are many of you who are participating in this course for whom gratitude is easy. You've incorporated gratitude in your life in many different ways. Maybe through meditation, maybe through prayer. Maybe you're someone who has always found it easy to notice what you're receiving and to express your thanks for that. Others, however, might find gratitude a little more tricky. So, as an example, I'm someone who has always felt deep gratitude. So I notice beauty in the world. I notice how other people are positively impacting me and what I'm receiving. But earlier in my life, I found it hard to express my gratitude to those people. That there was something about expressing gratitude that for me felt uncomfortable. I felt vulnerable in a way that I wasn't comfortable with. That might be true for some of you as well. And so as we go through some of the interventions or strategies for enhancing gratitude, I want you also to be thinking about what are some barriers that you have to expressing gratitude and what would be different for you and for the people you care about in your life if you kind of push back on those barriers, took some risk and expressed gratitude more directly?
