The Gratitude Diaries Read online

  I hesitated and then took a few steps back in his direction and waved my hand. He stopped, shovel midair. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to thank you for shoveling.”

  “Oh.” He nodded and went back to work. He must have wondered about the crazy lady who yelled at him and then thanked him, but I felt much better.

  —

  Back home, I pulled out a book I had recently found with the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome in the second century. While he was overseeing military campaigns, fighting off the hordes, and protecting an empire, he also wrote notes to himself about self-awareness and understanding the essence of being human. A central theme was recognizing what is in your control and what isn’t—and acting on the one and ignoring the other. It’s a philosophy that has resonated over the centuries.

  Reading through some of the meditations, I found a passage that seemed right for the day: Whether you are shivering with cold or too hot, sleepy or wide awake . . . do not let it interfere with doing what is right.

  I read it and smiled.

  Marcus Aurelius was part of a tradition of philosophy whose adherents became known as the Stoics, and though we now use the word to mean long-suffering and resigned, the Stoics simply encouraged people to be rational. Going back to the third century BC, the Stoic philosophers taught that we could handle problems based on how we thought about them. Marcus Aurelius believed we all have an inner power to clear away destructive emotions. He realized you can never be happy if you waste time frustrated by circumstances you can’t change.

  I put the book next to my bed and left it open to one of Marcus’s meditations: When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

  The next morning when I woke up, I reread that lovely line even before I checked my iPhone messages. Inspired by Emperor Marcus, I was ready to appreciate the day—and that meant putting my no-complaining policy to a further test.

  Given the weather, I would have liked to stay inside huddled near a fireplace, but I had a meeting at an ad agency across town. I put on a cashmere dress and leather boots, and taking a tip from a six-year-old I’d seen playing in the park, I pulled on snow pants underneath. I topped it all off with Gore-Tex gloves and a dorky earflap hat. I trudged through the cold and snow and arrived early enough to slip into a ladies’ room to remove the skiwear, dry my tote bag with paper towels, and brush out my hat-head hair.

  When I stepped into his office looking respectable again, the well-dressed executive I was meeting introduced himself and by way of greeting said, “Horrible weather, isn’t it? How are you holding up?”

  I thought of the old proverb that says, instead of complaining that the rosebush has thorns, be happy the thornbush has roses.

  “We’re lucky that we work inside. It’s very cozy in here,” I said cheerfully.

  He paused for a moment, then smiled. “Definitely better than digging ditches.”

  Maybe not a gush of gratitude, but surely more upbeat than discussing the dangers of frostbitten toes. And it probably made us both feel a little warmer too.

  For the rest of the week, I took it as a challenge to find a positive twist to every conversation. When people moaned about the weather, I sang the praises of Heattech tights and rubber insulated boots. Often people forgot their griping and asked where I got them (Uniqlo and L.L.Bean, by the way). I applauded the storekeepers who shoveled the snow off their sidewalks. I mentioned how lucky we were to have pashmina scarves sold on New York street corners—five bucks and they kept you warm! As a last resort, I declared the weather good preparation for the trip to Antarctica I hoped to take. Staying endlessly upbeat, I was surprised at how easily I could change the mood and get people agreeing with me.

  “You’re right,” said a man who had started talking about the weather as we waited for our orders at a coffee shop. “In a few months, we’ll be complaining about the heat and humidity.”

  “Meantime, we get to drink hot chocolate without any guilt,” I said, taking my frothy cup from the counter.

  “Oh, that looks good,” he said.

  “Reason to be grateful,” I said, raising my plastic cup in a faux toast.

  That night, I took out my pretty gratitude journal and wrote a few events from the day that made me feel good. Then I added: So thankful . . . that by complaining less, I’m feeling happier and more appreciative.

  But then I paused and thought about that. Was giving life a constantly positive spin creating a reality that wasn’t . . . real?

  The evidence from a variety of fields seems to prove a lot about the power of our perceptions. It’s hard to talk about “reality” when our neurotransmitters respond to subtleties that we may not even recognize. When we believe something, we virtually make it true.

  For example, a large percentage of people who are given what they think is a well-known brand for a headache (like Advil or Bayer) versus a generic pill report more pain relief from the big-brand pill. Doctors and pharmacists go nuts when they hear that because—it can’t be! Advil is the same as generic ibuprofen. Bayer is the same as aspirin. The molecular structures are identical and the active ingredients are the same. And don’t look for an answer in the inactive ingredients (those shiny sugar coatings), because the experiments have also been done with absolutely identical pills that people are just told are different.

  Wittingly or not, our own minds create chemicals more powerful than any pain reliever. If you think the big brand will work better, it actually does. I knew the evidence—but it happened to me all the time. While my husband the doctor had only generic drugs on his side of the medicine cabinet, I had shiny Advil. I knew I was wasting money on packaging and name-brand advertising, but when I used his ibuprofen, it just didn’t work the same. You can say it’s the placebo effect, but you can’t dismiss it as not real. Because in all the studies (including my personal one), people’s headaches respond differently to what they think they’re taking.

  Similarly, even the most sophisticated oenophiles can be influenced by the price and provenance (real or not) of a wine. An expert opening a bottle that he thinks is a hard-to-get $200 Domaine de Chevalier will almost always find it tastier than if the label says “House Wine.” Professor Paul Bloom of Yale, who has analyzed the underpinnings of pleasure, reported on one study where experts were given wine bottles with the labels changed. Some of the connoisseurs who got the wine with a cheap label thought it was worth drinking—but three times as many approved when it had a fancy label. Apparently all the erudite opinions about oaky, earthy, silky, and structured are affected by labels as much as by taste buds.

  Even more impressive was a study where people agreed to have their brains scanned in fMRI machines while they sipped wine through straws (anything for research). Screens set up in front of the volunteers purported to give information, including price, about what they were tasting, though actually each sip was the same. Professor Bloom says the pleasure centers of the volunteers’ brains “lit up like Christmas trees” when they believed they were tasting an expensive or rare wine.

  So it’s not just that we think we like something more—we actually experience it in a more positive way. As with the big-brand pain reliever, individual neural circuits can create different experiences from the same product. At dinner one evening when friends cooed over a fancy Napa Valley Chablis that they admired as oaky, lemony, and with floral undertones, I cynically suggested that they were drinking the label rather than the liquid. To me, it tasted like . . . wine. They condescendingly countered that my unsophisticated tastes couldn’t appreciate terroir subtleties. All of us were probably right. With different expectations, our pleasure centers fired different messages. While we all like to think we are the one having the truly authentic experience, it’s possible that there’s no such thing.

  What works for wine and
pain relievers can be expanded to a general view of life. Not complaining about the weather was my version of affixing a nice label to a cheap bottle of wine. It didn’t change the day, but it did change how I experienced it. That made sense since I’d learned a similar lesson in my marriage, that late night when Ron headed off to see a patient in the hospital. The event wouldn’t change, but my reaction could. And if a positive spin could light up my brain’s pleasure centers, I didn’t mind turning my brain into the neon signs of Times Square.

  When we appreciate what we have, we are more likely to be satisfied and less likely to be unhappy. On a roll with philosophers, I turned to the Greek philosopher Epicurus, who was born about 340 BC and figured out the value of appreciation a long time ago. He advised, Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not. Remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

  In the third century, the philosopher Diogenes agreed with the sentiment, and on a wall in Turkey, he inscribed a line from Epicurus: He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing.

  Wise as those comments may be, I also wanted to be a little careful. Philosophy and theology can be all about placating us to be happy, and appreciating what we have doesn’t mean we can’t strive for more. Gratitude may be the secret sauce for happiness, but the recipe works for a lot of us only if it still allows for ambition and resolve.

  Given that something as simple as not complaining about the weather made me feel better each day, I wondered what would happen if I didn’t complain about . . . anything at all. I could identify two kinds of complaining—one where you’re just fussing and finding fault (as with the weather), and the other where you actually want something fixed. My no-complaining policy would cover just the first category. The second remained simply practical. I didn’t have to abandon asking the dry cleaner for fair compensation when he ruined the ruching on my favorite dress (re-ruching is apparently not possible), and when the heel fell off my brand-new boots, I still sent them back for a replacement. Being grateful didn’t get in the way of solving problems.

  But whenever I could, I reminded myself of Epicurus’s advice that you shouldn’t spoil what you have by wanting something else. (Or as the 1970 Stephen Stills song put it, “Love the one you’re with.”) So instead of getting irritated when I stood in line at the grocery store, I stopped to be grateful I lived in a place where we could buy fresh food (strawberries in wintertime!). I didn’t complain about an editor who didn’t get back to me—his in-box was probably packed. When a friend took me to a concert that neither of us liked, I said (genuinely) that it didn’t matter—we had fun being together anyway.

  All the goodwill started to feel natural. What began as a big effort—I’d make myself find reasons to be grateful every day!—started seeping into my general attitude. It continued at home, too. Even though my month of being grateful to Ron had (officially) ended, the flip it position of seeing the bright side when he rushed off to tend a patient or take a call had made a difference. Thanks and appreciation and a positive outlook had started to be the norm.

  The one downside to the positivity was that I suddenly found myself excessively sensitive to people who weren’t grateful. My friend Dana met me for drinks one evening, and the moment she sat down, she told me how horrible everything had been. The big corporation where she worked had moved its headquarters downtown, and she hated the new location. Her own office was smaller and had no view. No decent shopping nearby. And the elevator was soooo slow!

  A few weeks earlier, I probably would have sympathized and eagerly tossed in my own tidbits to match her misery. But quitting complaining is like giving up greasy French fries. At first it’s hard—but after a while, you feel so much better that you never want to go back. And you want everyone else to reform too.

  “You like your job, you get paid well, and you’re one of the few people who still has an office rather than a cubicle. That’s a lot! You should be grateful,” I told her.

  “Oh, please. You have no idea how miserable it is.”

  “Miserable might be not having a job at all.”

  “I have to take the subway home at night, which I hate!”

  “But you get a car service in the mornings, which you love! Focus on that part!”

  With too many exclamation points exchanged, Dana and I glared at each other, each trying to understand why the other didn’t understand. Across the table from me, she looked as perfectly put together as always—her hair freshly blown out, a nice manicure, generous diamond studs in her ears. I told her about my gratitude project and the difference it was making in my life, but Dana wasn’t coming around. We parted with a distinct chill between us.

  When I got home, I told Ron how frustrated I was talking to Dana.

  “She’s so ungrateful. She has so much good in her life, and all she can see is what’s wrong.”

  “Maybe you can help her.”

  “I tried, but I don’t think I got through.”

  But a week later, Dana called me about some topic that wasn’t very important, and only at the end of the conversation did I realize that she had a different agenda.

  “Do you remember last year when I had all that back pain and ended up in surgery?” she asked.

  “Of course I do,” I said.

  “I was walking down the street yesterday and I realized I have no pain at all anymore. And I started to feel grateful for every step. Isn’t that amazing? Every time I’m walking now, I’m going to think about how grateful I am not to have pain.”

  I wished we were in the same room because I wanted to give her a big hug. “Grateful for every step. That’s a great first . . . step,” I said. And she must have felt my grin through the phone.

  —

  The next day, I took a train down to Philadelphia to talk with Dr. Martin Seligman, the renowned professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania who runs the Positive Psychology Center and is often referred to as the father of the field. If therapists have traditionally focused on fixing unhappy states, Seligman made it okay to think, instead, about encouraging positive ones. When he was the head of the American Psychological Association, he encouraged a major movement to change the goals of psychology from healing illness to improving well-being. “Curing the negatives does not produce the positives,” he explained, noting that someone can be free of depression, anxiety, and anger but still not feel satisfied and fulfilled.

  I’d first met Dr. Seligman a year earlier when I was starting to think about gratitude and he invited me to join him for dinner at a fancy restaurant in Philly. Over several courses that included caviar, lobster puffs, a delicately prepared sea bass, and a terrific chocolate mousse, he discussed how gratitude improves well-being. (The dinner improved it too.) When he created positive psychology, he set “happiness” as the gold standard for what was trying to be achieved. But now that he had seen some results, he was convinced that happiness wasn’t enough, and to truly flourish, we needed advantages like engagement, meaning, purpose, and gratitude.

  “Life satisfaction isn’t just about a cheerful mood. We now are looking at a greater sense of well-being,” he said, tasting the amuse-bouche that the very gracious waiter brought.

  For our meeting this time, I grabbed a sandwich at a local deli and then went to Dr. Seligman’s office. An entire academic discipline had grown around his ideas about positive psychology, and his team investigating affirmative approaches was large enough to take up a whole floor.

  We sat down and I told him about my effort to live gratefully for the year. He nodded approvingly.

  “Of all the positive strengths we’ve looked at, people who are highest in gratitude are also highest in well-being,” he said.

  The correlation was strong, but Seligman also raised the issue of causation versus causality. It was the old chicken-and-egg question: Does gratitude improve your well-being, or do people with
a high level of well-being also feel more grateful? The answer seemed to be: Both. Grateful people typically have more friends and social interactions and a rosier view of life that helps them flourish. But if you don’t come by that naturally, what Seligman called “gratitude interventions” can have a big effect.

  “You get relatively ungrateful people like me and have them do gratitude journals and letters and visits and see if their well-being increases,” he explained.

  Several studies have shown that the interventions have an effect that lingers for days, weeks, or even months. I mentioned that my gratitude journal was already changing my attitude and helping me refocus on the positive.

  “Very good,” he said with a nod. “And here’s another variant. As you go through the day, take photos of the things that you might write about in your journal that night. Doing something has a stronger effect than just thinking about it.”

  From what I’d already learned about bodies and brains, I could see how an action would help send the right message to (and through) the neurons. An action helps cement the neurological pathways we’re trying to encourage. In his earlier research, Seligman had found that the intervention that caused the most noticeable improvement was the gratitude visit.

  In his plan, you start by thinking of someone who changed your life for the better and sit down and write a letter of thanks. Make sure it’s concrete and specific, about three hundred words, and describes what the person did and how you were affected. Then arrange to get together with the person, not saying why. When you arrive, slowly and meaningfully read the letter. No interruptions allowed.

  “Interacting is the big phenomenon. There’ll be a lot of crying and emotion and hugs, but that aside, what we’ve found is that the person who has written the letter will be less depressed and feel more positive about life in general for a full month afterwards,” he said.

  A full month seemed like a big effect from a small project. On the other hand, I was working on a year of gratitude. I needed the lift to linger even longer.