Recently, I took a course on the science of happiness, and I was re-introduced to the idea of learning to be happy with what you’ve got. While I believe this to be intuitively a good thing, in practice, I find it hard to do. I know for certain, it is difficult for others as well. Consciously practicing gratitude is one way to learn to be happy with what you’ve got. Living in a materialist society often makes people endlessly seeking to have the new gadget or whatever. What made you very happy last year, now makes you unhappy because the newer model just came out or whatever. Endlessly keeping up with the Joneses is something which can make everyone unhappy. So, let’s discuss how to learn to be happy with what you’ve already got.
In starting our lives, there were so many things that we had no control over. We couldn’t control who our parents are/were, our genetics (at least some), we couldn’t control where we were born, our looks etc. But, we can choose how to act now and how to live our life. Likewise, in interactions in life, we can always choose how to react to things and how to interpret interactions.
Introduction To Gratitude
A very special emotion with regards to being happy with what you’ve got is gratitude. Gratitude goes beyond just being thankful. It is being thankful with regards to things that were given to use that we didn’t necessarily deserve. Like someone saving our life, someone helping us out when no one else would, or someone just being a friend when we were sad or depressed.
Scientific Definitions Of Gratitude
See my mindmap here for definitions of gratitude I made from a lecture from Dr. Dacher, a professor the University of California at Berkeley.
Practices To Cultivate Gratitude
Here are some gratitude practices, according to the Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley, that you can cultivate to improve your happiness and life.
1. Three Good Things
2. Gratitude Journal
3. Give it Up
4. Savoring Walk
5. Mental Subtraction of Positive Events
6. Mental Subtraction of Relationships, and Gratitude Letter
7. Practices you can do to cultivate gratitude
I have only tried a fe of these, but I did see some positive results.
You can read more about those practices here.
I personally have tried three good things and giving it up to be helpful.
Maximizing Versus Satisficing
In a fascinating paper called “Maximizing Versus Satisficing: Happiness Is a Matter of Choice” by Barry Schwartz et. al., the authors discovered some fascinating things about happiness. As for the definitions of the terms maximizers and satisficers, the authors describe in their paper “maximizers desire the best possible result; satisficers desire a result that is good enough to meet some criterion.” And as for the breakdown of the word “satisficing” it is a combination of the words satisfy and suffice and the term has been around for several decades.
The most interesting results from the survey, in my opinion, was that in general satisficers were happier with the things they bought and the interactions they had. In the authors’ own words, “we found that maximizers reported significantly less life satisfaction, happiness, optimism, and self-esteem, and significantly more regret and depression, than did satisficers”
Great Benefits of Gratitude According To Science
Being grateful predicts greater happiness, life satisfaction, and optimism. Being grateful also predicts lower envy, possessiveness, anxiety, and depression. (Source McCullough et al., 2002)
Can Gratitude Help Even In Bad Or Traumatic Times?
According to Dr. Emmons, a world leading expert on the science of gratitude, gratitude can help us in several ways in bad times. Gratitude helps us reframe bad experiences in our lives into something better, like maybe that experience was a test for us that made us stronger afterwards. Also, going through a bad experience itself could help you be more grateful in life and appreciate what you have. Source.
Additional Reasons Gratitude Is Good For Us
In another essay, Dr. Emmons gives 2 reasons why gratitude is good for us:
1. It strengthens social ties
2. It increases one’s sense of personal worth
Be Happy Now And Be Grateful Throughout Your Life
I am a big believer in being happy now, and not at some undetermined date in the future. While the circumstances of our life might not be great (bad finances, health, or whatever), we can always choose to frame our lives in positive ways. Of course, we can’t always have happy emotions, we can choose to be feel happy or actively choose to be positive over time.
I am personally grateful for so many things in life. I am especially grateful for having met several people who changed my life for the better. If I were completely ungrateful, I think I would be much more unhappy.
Conclusion
Having lived and travelled all over the world, I have come to believe that everyone wants to be happy in their own way, whatever that is. While people may try to cover up or mask their unhappiness, I really think that ultimately everyone wants to be happy. Having practiced some of the gratitude practices that I mentioned, I believe that consciously practicing gratitude really can help your happiness. What did you think of this article? Let’s discuss it in the comments below.