My problem with listing 3 things I’m grateful for
Almost every recent book on positive psychology (Flourish, Redirect, and The Happiness Advantage to name a few off the top of my head) mention one exercise that has been proven in studies time and again to have not only immediate positive effects, but also effects that last for months after the exercise has ended. The exercise is to list 3 things you’re grateful for every day.
I’m an admitted self-help junkie, and yet even I find this exercise to be a little cheesy. Not only that, but it also feels forced. I resist it. My gut reaction to forcing happiness is that it seems potentially dangerous, and insincere. What if we end up just repressing negative feelings rather than resolving them?
Yet, on the other hand, I know that sometimes we can be surprised by the effectiveness of brute force on our actual selves. Exercise, eat right, get enough sleep, and all will be well. Sometimes it feels like we’re just a bundle of mechanisms that, tuned correctly, lead to a balanced mental state. Many of the outer world’s problems magically go away when our inner world is healthy.
Possibly the most difficult thing to admit about why I resist the gratitudes exercise is that I find them to be difficult. Sitting and trying to think of things to be grateful for (even when I instinctively know that there are tons right in front of me) is a lot like turning off a hiking trail and clawing through vines and brush to get to my destination. It’s difficult mental work, and it’s embarrassing to admit that sometimes. The difficulty, at least in my case, is probably because my brain’s not used to thinking in this way. They are unused and unfamiliar neural pathways.
Which, when I think of it that way, makes me want to do them more.
I should not resist the unused neural pathways just because they’re a bit thorny and slow going. In fact, I should be diving into them with my best machete, clearing the way. Claiming territory in my brain that really should be mine.
And that’s the point of this exercise. Or, at least, it’s the point that convinces me to change my stance on the topic.
The act of clearing out new paths of thinking has a few primary effects.
- It gets easier over time
- I end up proactively noticing things in real time that I can “use later” during my 3 gratitudes
- I realize how many of the things I’m grateful for are super simple things. My walk to work, coffee in the morning with Kellianne, a surprising twist in a conversation.
The whole cycle of thought around this idea is helping me reverse my initial negative reaction about the 3 gratitudes, and turning it into more of a sincere interest. Now there just need to be less cheesy and ugly tools to help me make the gratitudes habit real.
A somewhat related, and entertaining, TED talk that got me thinking more about this:
I’m #interested in #lifelongprojects
Interest stats:
- Interested since: 2006
- Looking for a mentor: Nah
- Willing to mentor: In a minor way
- Level of interest: 4
- Level of mastery: 3
Story:
Strangely, my interest in the particular topic started with an obsession with a song, which started with an experience. If I may quote myself from January 4th, 2006:
This weekend I was walking to a bar or something with a friend and we walked along this big guy (sort of a down-and-out kind of guy, but probably not homeless) who had a giant boom box on his shoulder and it was playing “The Impossible Dream” loudly and he was singing along and walking so slowly, swaying. We started singing too, and it was a moment. It was the most beautiful, sad, awesome, terrible, beautiful, terrible, horrible, awesome, sad, and beautiful thing… I spontaneously burst out in tears and started laughing. I have been listening to the song over and over since… something about the whole scene just tears me apart.
When whales die they slowly sink down into the ocean, and all of the fish and the mermaids and the turtles and the sea horses line up and watch it and wipe away the opposite of tears and sing.
The Impossible Dream. Yeah, it’s a bit dramatic. But I feel like the topic deserves drama. We are so used to being practical these days. Living within the realm of the doable and the possible. Why not ponder for a while on the impossible? Feel the beauty of expression that exists when you do something knowing full well that you will never finish, that it will never work, and not making excuses about it.
Anyway, that train of thought eventually led me to this idea of lifelong projects. I remember being inspired by Jane McGonigal’s Cookie Rolling project. Wow that is cool.
Seriously.
The Myth of Sisyphus is very appropriate here. So is the idea of an infinite game.
To embrace it in my own way, I started taking a photo at 8:36pm every day, captioning it with what I’m doing, who I’m with, and anything else that came to mind. I started in May of 2008 and have been going since. Others have joined, unjoined, and restarted. I have sort of hesitated to put together a website or central repository for this project… I like that it is personal, and sprawling, and sort of chaotic.
Here’s some of the original thinking behind the 8:36pm project.
Once you start thinking about this in a certain way, you realize that our lives are filled with lifelong projects. Family, health, self-development, finances, career, etc. But the key ingredient that makes them qualify as a #lifelongproject in the hashtag sense is that they are done intentionally, and with an internal acknowledgement that they will never be done, and that is the beauty.
I’m #interested in #habits
- Interested since: 2010
- Looking for mentorship: Yes
- Willing to mentor: Yes
- Level of interest: 9
- Level of mastery: 4
Origin story
Habits are an interesting little corner of behavior change. They are the behaviors that have somehow become ingrained in our subconscious. They are programs in our brain that we do without thinking.
Of course, that is largely a myth. Even breathing, which can be considered one of our best habits, isn’t entirely automatic. We can stop. Of course, we’ll pass out before dying. Wouldn’t it be cool if all of our good habits were like that? Where, if we ever tried to stop going to the gym, our bodies would knock us out and take us to the gym without our consent? That’s how cool the breathing habit is.
The reason I’m interested in habits is mostly because so many people want to make and break them. It gets to the heart of our struggle between routine and self-improvement. It perfectly illustrates just how out of control we our in our own lives.
Anyone that tells you that it takes 21 days to start a new habit (or 7 days, or 30 days, or 90 days) is trying to not only sell you something, but is willing to lie to you in order to do so.
So what is it that we sometimes mistake for a habit: something we do automatically without thinking? I am coming to believe that it’s a hormonal program. Basically, a finely tuned set of dopamine triggers around a specific behavior.
Say you want to wake up at 7am every day. Creating positive experiences around this desire is one way to help you make it a habit. Drink a cup of warm chamomile tea half an hour before you want to go to bed. Find a nice robe to entice you out of bed in the morning. Take a shower to relax. Read a good book in bed for 5 minutes. All of these positive experience (if you think those are positive experiences) create a line of positive associations that lead you by the hand into a particular behavior. You can just start gobbling up the dopamine hits starting at bedtime, and pac man your way all the way through to the morning.
The last remaining thing is that you need a trigger to remind you to start this cascading game of habit pac man. Maybe a soft chimey alarm on your phone at 10pm. Maybe it’s “the moment of zen” at the end of the Daily Show. Basically, a “after this, do this” style direct connection, ala BJ Fogg’s behavior change philosophies. It’s easier to add an extra link to an existing habit chain than to start an entirely new one.
On the other hand, we all know how addicted to certain routines we can become. Left to their own devices, a strong enough habit chain can pull in all kinds of unintended associations that aren’t necessarily 100% great. Like having to sit at the same chair in the same restaurant on the same day every week and ordering the same thing, just so that you don’t upset the habit chain associated with connecting with your spouse. And then getting upset at your spouse when they invite a friend and they come early and get seated at a table that isn’t “yours”.
Ah, habits. So interesting.
Interested in #mentoring
Interest stats:
- Interested since: 2011
- Looking for mentorship: Got one! Diana Kimball.
- Willing to mentor: Not quite yet.
- Level of interest: 8
- Level of mastery: 1
Origin story:
This just all of a sudden jumped onto my zeitgeist last year, as a strategy for self-improvement that I hadn’t really considered before. Diana Kimball started this cool /mentoring movement that got me excited. Then I read about article by Atul Gawande called Personal Best in the New Yorker. We were running into engagement issues on Health Month and accountability became one of the most frequently mentioned suggested features to help with that. It was mentioned multiple times at Camp Mighty by speakers as the best way to continue development and growth in areas that you feel like you’ve started to plateau on.
What really got me was the idea that even masters of their crafts could have coaches, mentors, etc. It definitely resonated with me as a good idea. So, I started putting it out there as something I could offer to people, and that I’d be interested in finding a mentor myself, and everyone seemed to be keen on the idea. Excited to see where it leads.
Current focus:
Testing the waters. Finding a couple people to mentor, and finding a mentor for myself. What does it take to be a good mentor? Is there a way to make mentoring scale, or is it an inherently 1-on-1, time-intensive, pursuit? What tools can help?
Interested in #behaviorchange
- Interested since: 2000
- Looking for mentorship: Yes
- Willing to mentor: Yes
- Level of interest (0-10): 10
- Level of mastery (0-10): 7
Origin story:
Behavior change is the holy grail of my life’s work. I think that’s the most grandiose way to put it (and why not be grandiose?). From my early interest in building recommendation systems at Amazon (2000-2004), to my obsession with cults (Scientology, Landmark Forum, Jonestown, Vipassana, The Secret, self-help in general, etc), to 43things.com, to 750words.com, to healthmonth.com, and now to bud.ge, I seem to be on an ever-tightening downward spiral onto this particular millenia-old problem.
I love a good personal challenge. I remember, way back when, trying to gain and lose 10 pounds in consecutive months just so that I could feel what the weight of change felt like when it wasn’t attached to desired outcomes. I’ve fallen for NaNoWriMo several times, and before Health Month was a website, it was a challenge amongst friends every January (which Kellianne and I are doing this year too, for old-time’s sake).
I like playing around with the question, “how do you change yourself?” It’s a riddle that seems obvious “just do it, fool!” and impossible “but I can’t!” at the same time. Some things work for some, and not for others.
Current focus:
Teasing out an understanding of why certain strategies work, how to become a better experimenter of my own behavior, and how to help others change their behaviors, is where I’m currently focusing my interest.
I'm the CEO/Co-founder of Habit Labs, creator of 
