#459： Beyond Gratitude Lite： The Real Virtue of Thankfulness
Episode Stats
Summary
Dr. Robert Emmons is a bona fide expert in his field, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, who pioneered much of the research on the science of Gratitude. In this episode, Dr. Emmons explains what gratitude is, its benefits, and how to cultivate more of it in our lives. He also shares why most of the content out there about gratitude is what he calls "gratitude light," and makes the case that we need to see gratitude as a human virtue that requires a lifetime of intentional cultivation.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast. This Thursday
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is Thanksgiving here in the United States. It's a holiday dedicated to gratitude and
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one of which we often trot out expressions of thankfulness. But how much is gratitude
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a part of our lives the other 364 days of the year? And even when we do think about gratitude
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at other times, does it admittedly often take a fairly superficial and fleeting form? Well,
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on today's show, we're exploring the deeper, harder side of gratitude with my guest, Dr.
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Robert Emmons. Robert is a bona fide expert in his field, professor of psychology at the
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University of California, Davis, who pioneered much of the research on the science of gratitude.
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Robert explains what gratitude is, its benefits, and how to cultivate more of it in our lives.
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He also shares why much of the content out there about gratitude is what he calls gratitude
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light. And he makes the case that we need to see gratitude as the ancient saw it, as a human
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virtue that requires a lifetime of intentional cultivation. We then explore the myths of
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gratitude out there, like the idea that counting your blessings can make you complacent. And we
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end our show with some suggestions on how you can nurture your gratitude daily, including some
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specific ideas to try out on Thanksgiving. After the show's over, check out our show notes at
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aom.is slash gratitude, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
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So you are a professor of psychology, but your expertise is on gratitude. This is interesting
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because I never heard of a professor of gratitude until I came across your work. What got you
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interested in studying gratitude? Was there some event that happened in your life that drew you to
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that subject? Well, thank you. That's a great question. It's not too many of us that do this.
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There's a few more now than there were back 20 years ago when I first started. And it's a very
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interesting story. And I won't tell the whole thing because that'll take up all of our time. But
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what got me in literally was that this was an assignment. I was actually asked or invited to study
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gratitude. I was going to a conference that some folks were arranging. And one of the topics that they
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wanted to discuss at this conference was gratitude. And they said, okay, we don't have an expert. We
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need someone to go out there and figure out and to canvas the research literature and come and tell
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us what do we know about gratitude? Well, it turned out that we didn't know anything about it because
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there was no research on the topic. So I began conducting research right away. And it was awesome
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because, you know, it's not often you can actually find something that's been totally ignored or
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forgotten. And for a long time, I was referring to gratitude as the forgotten factor in happiness
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research and in psychology more generally. And so I set about to try to change that. And it was really
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the best assignment I was ever given. And still working on it today, 20 years later, you know,
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normally we choose what we want to study. But it seems like in this case, that gratitude chose me.
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Well, here's an interesting question. Why had it been ignored for so long? Because gratitude is such an
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Well, it's wild. I mean, it goes so way back there. The ideas, what people have said about it. I mean,
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we can go back, you know, a couple thousand years. I mean, for centuries, philosophers and others who
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were around and writing about the human condition would say things like gratitude is the greatest of
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the virtues. You know, it's the secret to life. And I think probably because it was so associated with
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either philosophy or maybe religion and spirituality that psychology tended to overlook it. Or it could
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be, it just was underestimated. You know, I think sometimes we think it's very simple. It's just,
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it's just saying thank you. And it's just a matter of politeness or manners or civility. And there's
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really not much more interesting to it than that. It turns out that that's totally wrong.
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All right. That raises the next question. Okay. So gratitude in your work is,
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Yeah. So I like to make a distinction because I'm a psychologist and I,
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I traffic in the arena of ideas and definitions. You know, we tend to muddy the waters very,
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very quickly and very easily. And so I don't like to disappoint. And so the way I think about
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gratitude and define it is that I think it, it comes about as in terms of two steps or two stages
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of what I call information processing. So how, how it makes sense out of life. One is that we see some
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good things in life. We see goodness around us. Maybe we see goodness in us, in other people.
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And so we affirm that there are some good things. There are some benefits or blessings or gifts,
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whatever language you feel comfortable using. So one is just, is just affirming or acknowledging
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there are good things in my life. And then the second step or second stage is recognizing that the
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source of this goodness is outside of us, right? And that's so important. It's so crucial. It makes all
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the difference seeing that this good thing is, is out there, but it's being given to us for our
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benefit. It's nothing we did to create it, to make it happen. Right? So gratitude comes to us. It's not
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created by us. It's, it's received. It's not achieved as I've said. And that makes all the
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difference. Just this, this, this slight tweaking of how we think about it. So basically two words,
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affirmation and recognition of this goodness. And is gratitude, would you decide, is it a feeling?
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Like once you, you recognize and affirm, like, do you feel something?
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Well, that's part of the complexity of it. See, we just started our discussion and already we see
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there's so many distinctions and layers and levels to it. It's actually, it's, it's a, it's a feeling.
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So it's certainly an emotion, but it's based on thinking. So if we think a certain way,
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we have this feeling, if we see that other people are doing something for us, for example,
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providing us with a gift, a benefit, a kindness, a favor that, you know, we couldn't necessarily
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provide for ourselves or was surprising. We know that they intended to benefit us,
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maybe at some cost, time, effort, whatever to themselves. Then gratitude is the feeling that we
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have that results from this awareness or this perception of this other person providing us with
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this benefit. So you're right. It's an emotion. It's a feeling, but it's based on thought.
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And it sounds like it's add to the complexity of gratitude that it also requires humility
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because you have to recognize that you can't do everything for yourself.
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Beautiful. I mean, humility is really the foundation. I think this just sensing incompleteness,
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right? Sensing imperfection, sensing that we are dependent upon others for who we are,
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where we are in life. I mean, it's really that, I think that begins with that fundamental awareness.
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So one thing that's interesting, you know, as you said, 20 years ago, people weren't really
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talking about gratitude in psychology, but thanks to your research, you know, there's been lots of
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talk on blogs and books, Oprah, you know, like gratitude journals and the like in pop culture.
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But you note in your book that, you know, a lot of this attention takes form of what you call
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Yeah. You know, it seemed to me when I began studying this and reading some of the articles,
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more popular sources, treatments of gratitude, so divorced from the traditional conceptions of
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gratitude as a virtue. So let me find what I mean by that. First, that gratitude would often be reduced
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to a tactic or to a strategy for becoming happier, right? Or becoming healthier or for living one's best
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life now. And it's true that the practice of gratitude certainly does have consequences and
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implications for happiness, for joy, for satisfaction, contentment, all the sorts of things we seem to
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want out of life. But just to reduce it to that, seem to really cheapen it, I think, to result in this,
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what I call this gratitude light, L-I-T-E. It seems that to me, gratitude is more of a virtue. It really
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says something fundamental about who we are and has implications for how we should live our lives,
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right? What we should do and who we should be, how we should live. And this is the language of
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virtue, right? It's what makes life better for ourselves as well as for others. And so just to
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reduce it to a set of, you know, five ways to become happier, and here's one of them. List your
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blessings, right? Count your blessings. Do a little gratitude on the side. That may or may not work.
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Certainly, it could work in the short term, but I think it lessens the value. It doesn't do justice
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to the complexity of gratitude. You turn gratitude into a selfish thing, right? It's like, I'm doing
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this for me. That's right. You're totally focused on how you're doing, what's your personal gain in
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this, and it just really distorts the meaning of it, which is really about the other person,
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right? It's really about noticing. It's also about giving back the good that you've received. So we know
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there's this link between receiving and then giving back or paying forward the good that you've
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received and been provided. And if the focus is totally on the self, it reduces it again to this
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tactic or this strategy. So it sounds like, okay, you're grateful, like any virtue, right? We're going
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back to air style here. You do the virtue for the sake of virtue. And if you're happy, that's just a
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happiness, it's a byproduct. It's a byproduct. It's a side effect, you know? And sometimes we're
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grateful and it doesn't make us happy. We're grateful because we know it's the right thing
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to do. We know it's good to give credit, to thank people who have helped us, who are bringing benefit
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and value to the world. It's the right thing to do. It's, you know, I guess it's part of a larger
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virtue, maybe justice or something like that, right? And we know the opposite of gratitude is
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certainly a tremendously negative vice. That is ingratitude, right? It's one of the worst things
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that people can say about you that you're ungrateful. So gratitude is a virtue for sure,
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but ingratitude is an accusation, right? And it seems to me that if we don't choose gratitude by
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default, we're choosing ingratitude. So as you've been talking, I've noticed you've been talking about
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being grateful to someone, person, but I mean, some things we have, like just existence itself
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can't be attributed to a single person, right? It could be, I mean, some people say it's God
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or there's evil. It's just like, well, it's just universe. So what about, how do you, how do you,
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can you express gratitude for things like that? Like, oh, the sky is beautiful or whatever.
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Absolutely. Because you're, you're seeing value. So it does, it does fit the definition in the sense
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and in a broad sense that as you're seeing goodness, you're affirming that there are good
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things in life, whether it's, you know, life itself, whether it's the sky, a beautiful sunset,
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whether it's freedom and a democracy. I mean, the list goes on and on and people write these
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sorts of things down when they're asked to keep a journal of what they're grateful for.
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But also they realize at the same time, we realize you and me that, you know, we didn't do anything
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to bring this about, right? We did nothing to create the, you know, the sunset or the blue sky
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or life itself. And so we see, we recognize that this is beyond ourselves. And so there is a
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difference technically, I mean, philosophically between gratitude to someone and gratitude for
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something, but it turns out they tend to work the same way when it comes to, you know, enhancing our
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life and making our lives better in various ways. Because it requires that you have to be humble,
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realize things are there outside of yourself that you have. That's right. So what are some of the myths
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that are out there about gratitude that you've seen pop up in the past few years?
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Yeah. I'd say one of the big ones is that gratitude makes us complacent or, or actually lazy. I guess
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maybe a better way to phrase that is that gratitude undercuts ambition. You know, so, so the idea is
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that, you know, if we're grateful for something, it means we're satisfied, we're complacent. We're not
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going to, you know, give any effort anymore. We would just say, you know, I'm happy with what I have
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or what my situation is in life. And that's it, right? I'm not going to be motivated to do anything.
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Just kind of sit around, right? Lethargic, passive, maybe. It turns out totally false, right? I mean,
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it couldn't be more false. There's a number of studies showing that gratitude actually motivates us
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to do more. It inspires us. It's energizing, right? That, that it's an engine for progress,
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as one author said. And so that's one of the big myths. And so we can show that that's really
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false. It actually leads to the opposite, leads a person to be more inspired, to give back, to be
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generous, to be more successful in achieving their goals. Purpose and gratitude go together. So a
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grateful person is purpose-driven. They feel more energetic, more enthusiastic. They go out there and
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they're just more determined. And other people want to help them out because their relationships are
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stronger, more connected. Their relationships are strengthened through expressing gratitude.
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And so many times, of course, we need people to help us achieve our goals. And gratitude can be a
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very, you know, facilitative force in that, toward that purpose.
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Yeah. We just had a podcast guest on talking about leadership in any organization. And he said,
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you know, one, we talked about how most people, they leave a job, not because they're not getting
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paid enough. Typically they leave, they just don't feel like they're appreciated. And he just,
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he's making the point that what people want most often is like, they want to be noticed and needed.
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And saying thank you, seems like that's one way to, I don't know, encourage people to work harder
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Yes, exactly. You know, it's one of the reasons why sometimes it's, I think, not as expressed as
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often as it could be in organizational settings and in workplaces is because the belief that if I
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thank, you know, my employees, they're going to be more satisfied or complacent and not try as hard,
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lose their edge. And I mean, I don't know where that comes from, that idea, because it's totally
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false and it's false in everyday life. And it's a little research that we know that's relevant to
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that also shows that it's, you know, gratitude is, is energized. It's inspiring. All right. If someone
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thanks you, if you get thanked around the house for doing an errand or a project or a chore or whatever,
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I mean, you're going to be more likely to do it the next time. So it just seems to me to be very
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commonsensical. So besides gratitude causing you to lose your edge, any other myths that you've seen
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out there? Yeah, I think one of the ones that sometimes is kind of festers under the surface
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is that, you know, gratitude is all fine and well when life is going well, when life is full of,
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you know, victories and success and benefits and our relationships are firing on all cylinders.
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We're healthy. Kids are doing well, right? Successful and so on. That, that's when gratitude
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is okay. That's when it's, you know, strongest. That's where it has its potential. But it turns out
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that gratitude is also very, very beneficial. In fact, even maybe more important during difficult
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times, times of stress and struggle and trial and tribulation, you know, in the face of suffering,
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gratitude can be beneficial. Not that you're grateful for these circumstances, right? I mean,
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you lose stuff. I mean, we're going through a very terrible time, you know, in California right
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now with wildfires and nobody's grateful that they've lost everything. But, but, but sometimes
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rising from the ashes is, is a feeling of thankfulness that, you know, we still have,
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you know, our family, we have opportunities, you know, we have possibilities. And so we often see that
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people will choose gratitude as an attitude in difficult times. It helps them get through these times.
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It's a, it's, I think, an aspect of resiliency that, that fuels and fires hope in a person's life.
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So that would be, I think, another myth that you can't be grateful going through difficult times.
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Well, we know every day in every way that people are grateful, even though they face big challenges
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in life. Yeah. That really hit over, hit home to me because I've known in my life when I've had
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really hard times, I'm not, I'm not grateful that I'm going through that hard, specific hard time,
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what I am grateful for are, you know, the people who come to my aid and comfort me and my, you know,
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my family and that during that hard, that like, you become more attuned and aware of that whenever
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you are, it makes it more acute, the gratitude. Well, I think it goes back to what you said earlier
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about humility is that it forces us to become more dependent upon others. We, we realize in this
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situation that, that we can't do it by ourselves. We, we can't go at it alone. And again, when life is
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going well, you can live under this illusion of self-sufficiency and autonomy. But then,
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you know, when a life goes off the deep end, we get to the end of the rope. That's when we realize
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how much we depend upon other people. And that sets the stage for the feeling of gratitude.
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So we've been talking about the, we're not grateful. We don't exercise the virtue of gratitude
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just so we can feel better, but there are some happy side effects of working on the virtue of
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gratitude. So what are some of those happy side effects of gratitude?
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Yeah. So, you know, right from the start, I mean, that was the very first research project that I
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did was to ask people to keep a gratitude journal, write down things that they were grateful for on
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a regular basis. And it seemed to me that the philosophical literature and other writings,
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spiritual writings suggested there's a link between a grateful focus and higher overall emotional
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functioning. And so we found that we found that when people were, were in this gratitude focus
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condition that is bringing it to awareness and calling their attention to it, their lives just
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improved many ways. Emotionally, they, you know, they became happier, more joyful. They became more
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energetic, became more attentive. It really brought a new lease to their lives is what, is what people
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reported. Relationally, we found that people, when they were practicing gratitude, they felt closer,
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more connected to others, less lonely, less isolated. Emotionally, we found that they experienced less stress,
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less depression, less anxiety. So while gratitude was magnifying the good in their lives, it was also
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reducing, or I like to say it's rescuing us from the bad, from the negativity, from anxiety, from
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a sense of entitlement, a sense of resentment. So all those things which rob us of our happiness,
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gratitude works in both directions, amplifying or pumping up the good, and then reducing or rescuing us
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from the negative. And then third, improving and strengthening our relationships, because gratitude
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really is an other, other focused emotion. It makes our relationships stronger, more connected.
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It helps them, it keeps them from sputtering and clonking out, you know, our relationships. And I
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think that's where really where gratitude has its biggest effect, where you really see the power and
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potential of gratitude is in the connective or relational aspect of life.
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Yeah, I thought the research on depression and anxiety was particularly interesting. You know,
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some of the research shows like, I mean, just exercising gratitude on a daily or weekly basis
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can have a profound impact on reducing feelings of depression and anxiety.
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I mean, it's really protective in that sense. You know, I mean, I think it's really a simple
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incompatibility idea with different feelings that are really opposites. I mean, you can't really be
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depressed and grateful at the same time. You can't be depressed, you can't be anxious and grateful at the
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same time. One of my gratitude heroes and mentors, he said that we're never more than one grateful
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thought away from peace of heart, right? Kind of calmness, contentment, right? When he also said,
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the same person also said that gratitude makes us fearless, right? Gratefulness and fearlessness,
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you can't be. See, when you look at life through a lens of gratitude, you tend to focus on things like
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abundance and safety, surplus, sufficiency, overflow. You think of all these terms, which are
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more or less, you know, synonyms for each other, or that they share a same conceptual space.
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It's just calming to see life that way. Whereas if you focus more on a posture of, you know,
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insufficiency, deficit, insecurity, right? I mean, that generates feelings of anxiety and possibly,
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you know, depression, if you believe that your situation is going to stay like that in the
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future. So I think there's just, we're just really starting to learn ways in which gratitude
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rescues us from conditions like depression and anxiety. We're going to take a quick break for
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your word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. And then, as you mentioned, it reduces stress,
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which not only affects you psychologically, but physiologically as well, too. So expressing,
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you know, gratitude on a regular basis can make you healthier.
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Well, I mean, some of the most amazing findings with respect to gratitude are exactly in that
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realm of physiology, in the medical benefits that research is showing that gratitude is good
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medicine. It's really amazing. That's what, you know, really struck me right from the beginning
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was that the practice of gratitude reaps benefits physiologically from things like just health
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behaviors like, you know, sleeping better, for example. We all need more sleep, right? We're all
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sleep deprived. And there's about eight good solid studies linking better sleep quality and quantity
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to gratitude. Gratitude motivates people to exercise more. It reduces their blood pressure.
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It increases healthy cholesterol, right? I mean, it's amazing that something seemingly as simple
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and under the radar is gratitude can have so many health benefits. And now that the latest generation
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of researchers is trying to unpack this at a more molecular level, looking at clinical biomarkers of
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health and aging, things like inflammation, for example, things like the length of your telomeres
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and your chromosomes, which is related to aging. So I think we'll uncover more and more ways in the
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next five to 10 years, showing that gratitude affects health through some of these physiological
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mechanisms. Yeah, that's amazing. But again, to reiterate, like you, you don't, you're not,
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you shouldn't be grateful just so you can get these side effects. It's like, I think Viktor Frankl
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said something like, if you make happiness your target, like you're going to miss all the time,
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right? So that's right. Yeah. Happiness, happiness pursued eludes, right? But if you don't,
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I can't remember the rest of the saying, but if you, if you go for it indirectly, then you'll be more
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successful. And I think that's the way it is with, even with gratitude itself, you know, can you actually
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go directly at gratitude? And I'm not so sure. Lately, I'm thinking it's more like happiness,
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right? Because if we go for it directly, we go back to where we were at the beginning,
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talking about it as this approach that, you know, is all focused on me and how am I doing,
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right? Am I more grateful than what's yesterday? Am I more grateful than the person next door or the
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person, you know, in the bed next to me? And we start to engage in this comparison process,
00:22:40.000
which can be very deadly for our happiness. And so if we focus on gratitude, it takes our focus off
00:22:46.600
of ourselves, not how we're doing, but really how other people have helped us out, right? It's,
00:22:51.980
I talk about how gratitude as a, as a checklist form of happiness or to-do list. I'm going to put
00:22:58.720
on my list today. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to take five minutes. I'm going to count my blessings
00:23:02.400
and then that's it. Boom. I can check that off. I've done that task for the day. I just don't think
00:23:07.500
it's that accurate or that effective. It has to be really more integrated into everyday life. It
00:23:12.520
can't be something that we just add on or tack on because it's, it's really not an app that we can
00:23:16.740
add on. It's an entirely new operating system. I've written about that. I think that really
00:23:21.800
seems to, seems to mesh with the psychological and medical research.
00:23:26.000
So yeah, it sounds like gratitude is a mindset. Like you have to have a more open and aware mindset
00:23:31.240
so that you notice things that you can be grateful for when they do pop up instead of that,
00:23:36.720
instead of you, if you're just like narrowed focus and trying to look for, you're probably
00:23:39.680
going to miss things that you otherwise would have saw if you had a more open focus.
00:23:43.640
Well, you'll miss them or you take them for granted, or you think that, you know, you deserve
00:23:48.580
them, right? The language that we use, right? The internal monologue or dialogue inside is just so
00:23:57.420
important, right? A good thing can happen and two people could equally notice the good thing,
00:24:01.580
but one expected it, right? One felt that they deserved it, that they were entitled to
00:24:06.560
it. And the other one said, no, this is, you know, this is above and beyond what I thought
00:24:10.400
I was going to get. This is an example of surplus or abundance. They were surprised by it. And
00:24:16.800
the emotional reaction will be 180 degrees opposite in those two cases.
00:24:21.200
So we've been talking about gratitude. So it's, it's a virtue. That's something you practice,
00:24:26.740
like Aristotle said, but it's also a character trait that you develop with, you know, practicing the
00:24:32.040
virtue. So, I mean, is gratitude sort of like a temperament or related to temperament, right? Like
00:24:37.780
resilient, you know, I guess neuroticism or some of the other ones where they're like, some people
00:24:42.860
are born, are some people born, I guess the question I'm asking, are some people born more grateful
00:24:46.440
than others? Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I think we all have the capacity for it, right? There's a
00:24:53.160
potential for it, like, like kindness, for example, right? Or generosity or humility or, or any of these
00:25:00.740
other virtues that are in most people's lists of, you know, basic human virtues. But I think it has to
00:25:06.140
be, you know, fleshed out. I think it has to be, it has to be taught or it could be caught by having
00:25:11.020
appropriate role models, whether they're parents or teachers or mentors or whoever. And I mean,
00:25:16.960
we know there's, you know, differences between people and the capacity for gratitude, even within
00:25:21.900
the same family. You know, I mean, I have two sons and one of them is much more grateful than the
00:25:27.020
other one. We think we did the same thing, you know, treat them, raise them the same way, but they,
00:25:30.820
they turn out to be very different. So there hasn't been a whole lot of biological studies looking at
00:25:37.140
factors related to heritability with gratitude. It doesn't seem to be quite as, as strongly wired
00:25:43.360
in as, as some of these other ones that you mentioned, like extroversion or emotional stability
00:25:48.040
or, but I think, you know, some of these probably change our potential for gratitude. I think it's
00:25:52.860
much easier for an extroverted person and the one who's agreeable and more emotionally stable
00:25:57.340
to be grateful. It tends to go along with those qualities, empathy, you know, humility, as you
00:26:02.980
mentioned. And a person who is more, maybe introverted or less agreeable, more prone to,
00:26:09.420
to negative emotionality is going to have a more difficult time. But I think, and I think we know
00:26:13.900
this from our research and from the research taking place all around the world, that people can learn
00:26:19.140
gratitude. And many of those who show the most gain in changes in gratitude are the ones who had the
00:26:26.060
most work to do, are the ones who started in the more negative side of the spectrum. And they show the
00:26:30.960
most benefits from a gratitude practice. All right. That's good. So it is learnable. You can get
00:26:34.760
better at it. It's a skill that you can develop and acquire. I mean, I wouldn't do the stuff that I
00:26:38.680
thought I would learn. You know, it's, uh, uh, I would, I would be in some other line of work,
00:26:44.100
right? But you're right. There is a, there is a dogma in, in psychology, especially, and I was
00:26:49.460
trained in personality psychology 30 years ago, 32 years ago when I got my PhD and the, and the dogma was
00:26:56.140
that you can't change personality. It's, it's, it's set in stone, you know, it's hardwired in
00:27:01.160
there and can't do much about it. And a person who's extroverted at age eight, it's going to be
00:27:05.960
the same at 18, 38 and 88. Right. But now we know that, you know, some practice, you can move some of
00:27:11.780
these dimensions around and gratitude seems to be one of those that is modifiable with, with some
00:27:17.020
practice. Well, before we get into tactics, I know we don't like talking about gratitude tactics,
00:27:22.260
but you know, things we can do to develop the skill and the mindset of gratitude. I want to ask
00:27:26.280
this, I want to do the flip side. So there was a, an essay that we published on our site from 1902
00:27:31.700
written by this guy named William George Jordan. And it was called the courage to face ingratitude.
00:27:38.320
So he's talking about when you do kind things or good things for people, we often expect
00:27:43.780
to be thanked for that. But oftentimes because gratitude is often overlooked, we take things for
00:27:50.140
granted. We don't get thanked. How do you, I mean, I don't know, have you talked, have you researched
00:27:54.360
that at all? Like not, not thinking, but being thanked or how to deal with that?
00:27:58.980
I should, I should read that article. First of all, it sounds really interesting. I mean,
00:28:03.000
one of the things I'll often notice is that how, how closely, how carefully we monitor other people's
00:28:08.920
gratitude or lack thereof. You know, it's almost like we, we, we painstakingly monitor, we're obsessed
00:28:15.060
by it. And I know this is true because one of the questions I get asked most frequently when I give,
00:28:19.900
lectures and talks to public audiences on gratitude, almost invariably, not quite every, every talk,
00:28:25.780
but more so than any other question is, you know, how can I get so-and-so fill in the blank to be
00:28:31.980
more grateful? Oh, it's a son, it's a daughter, it's a teenager, it's a spouse, it's a coworker.
00:28:37.100
Like we're obsessed with other people's level of gratitude or in, usually it's ingratitude,
00:28:43.080
right? And we want to correct them. We want to fix them and change them and move them. And so there is,
00:28:48.420
there is something about it that it's a signal to us, I think, in our relationships. You know,
00:28:53.240
you think about, and I try to think about why are we so obsessed with monitoring other people's
00:28:58.480
levels of gratitude? And I think it's because gratitude being a virtue is a signal that this
00:29:05.540
is a, this is a good person, right? That this is a person we can trust. This is a person we can rely
00:29:10.640
on. And so we're making these judgments, usually at an unconscious level on a regular basis. And
00:29:16.360
that's one piece of information that we use. Now, closer to home, we want that just because we know
00:29:22.160
it's going to bring relational harmony, right? If we're living with a person who is, you know,
00:29:26.740
focused on the bad all the time, they're focused on what life is, is lacking. They're focused on this,
00:29:32.180
this other end of the continuum that I mentioned, they're focused more on insufficiency and
00:29:36.560
insecurity and a sense of resentment, entitlement. We know life is going to run more smoothly if
00:29:42.980
they can at least, if they can at least move up to the, maybe the, a non-gratitude point on the
00:29:47.940
scale, as opposed to an ingratitude point on the scale. But yeah, we're totally fixated on the other
00:29:53.760
person and monitoring that and trying to do something about it. Right. So it sounds like the
00:29:58.280
more grateful you are, the more courage you have to face ingratitude. Well, you become a role model
00:30:03.880
too for those people around you, right? So instead of, you know, worry about fixing that person, maybe
00:30:08.820
express more gratitude toward that person or for that person because gratitude is a virtue. We know
00:30:14.780
it's more often caught than taught. So there's a few studies looking developmentally with parents and
00:30:20.460
kids and, you know, they find that the best predictor of a child's gratitude is the mother's or
00:30:27.340
the father's gratitude. And then it's the expression of gratitude within the family. So becoming a role
00:30:33.640
model and then encouraging gratitude, reinforcing gratitude when you see it in your children is
00:30:39.560
some of the best ways in which you can, you know, raise a grateful child.
00:30:43.140
So let's talk about things we can do to exercise and develop the virtue of gratitude. So we've been
00:30:48.580
talking about gratitude journals. Does that have to like look like a certain way? Do you, is there a
00:30:53.480
format or is it just, you just free write and say, this is what I'm grateful for, yada, yada?
00:30:58.280
Yeah. You know, because so many studies now have been published that gratitude journaling seems to
00:31:03.300
be an entire industry. Oh yeah. You can buy journals that are gratitude journals now.
00:31:07.840
Oh, and everyone's developing a new one or a new, you know, kind of twist on it and so forth. They're
00:31:13.220
developing an app, you know, that you can do gratitude journaling, you know, on your phone and
00:31:17.000
so on. It turns out, you know, it really doesn't matter that much, you know, how you do it, whether you
00:31:23.140
do it, you know, for example, people ask me, well, should I journal at the beginning of the day or the
00:31:27.260
end of the day or during the day or whatever, you know, it doesn't really matter. I mean,
00:31:30.960
the point is, is that you're doing something to pay attention to gratitude inspiring events or
00:31:36.820
circumstances in your life. I mean, the journal works because it's, it helps us to remember and
00:31:42.300
to recall and gratitude is, if nothing else, it's based on memory, right? Benefits, good things we've
00:31:50.020
received, goodness in life, and just becoming focused on that so we don't overlook them, so we don't
00:31:55.320
ignore them or take them for granted. So, you know, a lot of people don't keep the journal at
00:32:01.600
all, but they're some of the most grateful people that I know. It's just become more of a habit for
00:32:05.780
them. It's become more just a way of looking at life, a lens through which they view life, and I
00:32:11.100
mean, that's ultimately, I think, where most people want to get to. That's where I want to get to,
00:32:14.940
why I do this stuff. What keeps me studying gratitude is because I know I need it, you know,
00:32:20.080
and because I'm forgetful, and I have to, I have to remember to practice gratitude every day because
00:32:26.840
every day I forget to practice gratitude because I'm forgetful, like, like most people, if we're
00:32:31.560
honest and we admit that. So it doesn't really much matter, you know, how you do it, just doing it
00:32:36.360
makes the difference, and it doesn't matter how often, you know, there was a, there was a debate
00:32:40.900
for a while there, if you do it too often, you know, does it wear off? And, and I guess, I mean,
00:32:46.040
if you certainly did it in terms of this to-do list, write down five things, you know, and stop
00:32:50.720
and do that, you know, several times a day, it's going to get kind of disrupted and start to feel
00:32:55.000
like a burden. The last thing we want gratitude to do is to be a burden. You know, gratitude should
00:32:59.460
make our life easier and, and, and make it freer and make us feel lighter. I think gratitude liberates
00:33:05.460
us in a lot of ways. And, you know, if we see this as drudgery as a to-do list, it's going to have
00:33:10.020
the opposite effect. So gratitude journal, doesn't matter how you do it, can be really useful. I
00:33:15.200
imagine a really, a more powerful way to express gratitude or experience that virtue of gratitude
00:33:20.560
is if the, you're grateful towards a person, like actually tell that person how grateful you are.
00:33:27.540
One of the most important studies that was published the last couple of years did actually
00:33:32.280
examine both, both a reflection, just the typical or traditional way I started just by having people
00:33:39.520
write things they were grateful for, and also had a second condition where they went out and they
00:33:44.220
expressed that gratitude that they wrote about either through their social media or in person,
00:33:49.880
person to person contact. And as you would expect that that was more powerful, that the combination
00:33:54.660
of the private component with the public expression was more powerful than just the private expression.
00:34:01.420
So it makes a lot of sense to me, you know, gratitude is an emotion, an emotion is call for action.
00:34:07.220
There's what psychologists call an action tendency associated with an emotion, right? When we're anger,
00:34:11.920
we want to strike out at someone. When we're anxious or fearful, we want to avoid the situation
00:34:17.380
that's making us afraid. When we're feeling love, affection, we want to, you know, move toward the
00:34:22.640
object of our affection. When we're grateful, we want to give back the goodness. We want to express
00:34:26.340
that gratitude. We want to say thank you. So not having the opportunity to do so by just having a private
00:34:32.480
component, I think, you know, underestimates its power and its potential. So certainly the expression
00:34:37.340
is a big part of, I think, why gratitude works. Yeah. William James talked about, I remember I
00:34:42.180
just got done, I was reading some William James the other day and he talked about like, you don't
00:34:45.480
want to let your emotions go to waste. If you, if you're feeling something. They're there for a
00:34:50.140
reason. I know they're, they're built in there. They serve an important function. Right. And he says,
00:34:54.420
if you feel something, you don't take action. You're just training your mind to like not take action
00:34:58.720
whenever you feel that. How many times do we feel, you know, a sensory regret, right? I mean,
00:35:04.220
we wish we had thanked that person. We wish we had done that, right? We wish we had written that
00:35:08.840
letter and now it's too late. And maybe we wish we expressed gratitude to our, to that parent or
00:35:14.240
grandparent or friend or teacher or mentor and, you know, and now they're gone. And so we don't want
00:35:19.300
to have that unfinished business. What do you think? I mean, this is Thanksgiving week. Do you have any
00:35:24.780
gratitude practices you suggest families do together during the holiday season? Right. So, I mean,
00:35:30.660
Thanksgiving course is a great time. I mean, it explicitly draws us to the source of gratitude
00:35:36.180
and sources in our lives or our annual gratitude holiday. Of course, it doesn't have to be just
00:35:40.360
Thanksgiving. I was being given this some thought, especially with yesterday or Sunday being
00:35:45.900
Veterans Day. I mean, that's, that's a gratitude holiday. Most holidays are actually gratitude holidays.
00:35:50.660
When you think about it, right, we're celebrating, we're remembering Mother's Day, Father's Day,
00:35:54.560
right? I mean, the list goes on and on, but gratitude and Thanksgiving course go, go hand in
00:36:01.280
hand. And it's, it's very valuable just because at least for the one day, right, no matter how
00:36:06.260
ungrateful or how forgetful we are the rest of the year, at least one day, our attention is called
00:36:11.380
toward gratitude. And the key to me, at least someone who studies this and thinks you should be
00:36:16.900
grateful on a daily basis, not just that one day, but the other 364 is that, you know, we shouldn't
00:36:23.000
leave gratitude on the Thanksgiving table, right? It's such a wasted opportunity. And so, I mean,
00:36:28.840
everyone has their own rituals, their own practices, you know, whether it's the traditional,
00:36:33.800
you know, going around the table and saying, what you're grateful for this Thanksgiving, or just,
00:36:38.780
you know, with, I mean, families with, with smaller children will have other rituals that'll be more
00:36:43.320
practical and more focused on doing something, right? Whether it's, you know, giving away a gift to
00:36:49.480
someone in the community, whether it's drawing a picture of something that you're grateful for.
00:36:54.220
I think a really useful thing to do within families is to do like a genealogy, like a family tree,
00:37:00.260
right? It doesn't have to be that complicated and involved, but I think it's important for people
00:37:04.540
to know where they came from, right? Who made them in a sense, right? Their ancestry. And that can help
00:37:10.640
us go back generations and help us show that, you know, where we are today and who we are today
00:37:15.020
is based on those who came before us. And that can be very, you know, satisfying and helpful
00:37:20.940
within families, especially nowadays where families are so scattered, you know, and you don't know,
00:37:25.300
and my kids don't, you know, their grandparents and on my mom's, on my wife's side, you know,
00:37:30.720
live the other side of the country. My parents are both passed on now, so they don't have that. So
00:37:35.600
just, just knowing that where they came, this genealogy can be super important in helping us
00:37:40.700
develop a sense of gratitude for who we are and where we came from. Yeah. I've seen studies too,
00:37:45.580
that when kids know about their genealogy, they're somehow more resilient because they,
00:37:49.880
they can see that they're not, they're not the reason of their existence. Like there are other
00:37:55.220
people that came before them. And also they can, they can see the stories, you know, of their
00:38:00.120
ancestors saying, well, you know, great, great grandpa sailed from Italy to here and he hit on
00:38:06.460
hard times, but through hard work, he got up and then, oh, this hard time happened. And then,
00:38:10.340
but he got over it. So you can see resilience in your own family. And you think, well, if great,
00:38:15.020
great, whatever is able to do that, I'm able to handle my problems. That's excellent. Right. And
00:38:19.400
just seeing that as part of your identity, who you are, you know, I'm, I'm a, you know, I'm a,
00:38:24.140
I'm an Emmons or I'm a Robinson, whoever it is. Right. It's like, it's like, this is what,
00:38:28.700
this is who we are. Right. And so, and whether it's, you know, relatives or just how our lives have
00:38:34.620
been made more comfortable by the sacrifice of those who came before us. Right. And why shouldn't that
00:38:39.860
be also the focus of, of Thanksgiving? You see Thanksgiving as a, as a time to practice
00:38:45.320
gratitude is simply a chance to focus on the unseen, the unseen heroes, the unseen people or
00:38:51.640
processes or forces that gave us the opportunities that we have right now. And all of that ties into,
00:38:57.540
I think, very nicely, this particular holiday. Well, Robert, is there some place people can go
00:39:01.600
to learn more about your work? Well, I've written several books, trade books on gratitude that
00:39:07.040
share the science of gratitude, share the practices of gratitude and, and how to get more of it, or how
00:39:12.760
to, how do we let gratitude get more of us, which I think is an interesting way to, uh, to approach this,
00:39:18.040
um, this challenge as well. And so, you know, you can go to Amazon, the usual Barnes and the usual
00:39:23.480
suspects online and check out my first book was called Thanks. How practicing gratitude can make you
00:39:28.680
happier. Gratitude works, which was my second book is a little bit more, um, practice focused.
00:39:34.620
It includes a 21 day challenge for a deepening one's level of gratitude with several different
00:39:39.240
practices. And then my last book, which I think my favorite, it's called the little book of gratitude
00:39:44.360
that has a lot of actionable techniques, about 35 specific exercises and practices that a person
00:39:50.900
can engage in to just to practice gratitude, to, to build this into their lives so that they can,
00:39:57.140
you know, capitalize on the power and potential of gratitude to heal, to energize and to change their
00:40:01.940
lives. And so, you know, your local bookstore, if you still have one or, uh, online, those three
00:40:07.800
would be the top picks. Well, Robert, thank you for coming on. This has been an absolute pleasure.
00:40:13.360
Well, the pleasure is mine. Thank you for having me. Happy Thanksgiving to you, to your listeners.
00:40:19.240
My guest today was Dr. Robert Immons. He is the author of several books on gratitude,
00:40:23.620
including his latest, the little book of gratitude. All of them are available on amazon.com.
00:40:27.640
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash gratitude. We can find links to resources,
00:40:46.820
Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:40:51.380
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy
00:40:54.760
the show, you've gotten something out of it, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us
00:40:57.940
a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you.
00:41:01.580
Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who would think we get something
00:41:04.520
out of it. As always, thank you for your continued support. I really do. I am grateful for your
00:41:08.840
support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you happy Thanksgiving and stay manly.