Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey (TED Books)

by A.J. Jacobs

gratitude’s psychological benefits are legion: It can lift depression, help you sleep, improve your diet, and make you more likely to exercise. Heart patients recover more quickly when they keep a gratitude journal.

A recent study showed gratitude causes people to be more generous and kinder to strangers.

gratitude is the single best predictor of well-being and good relationships, beating out twenty-four other impressive traits such as hope, love, and creativity.

“Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.”

If you believe evolutionary psychologists, all humans are genetically programmed to pay attention to what goes wrong.

We often see our lives as problem after problem, crisis after crisis. Many of us live in what some psychologists call the “deficit” mind-set, not the “surplus” mind-set. We spend far too much time fretting about what we’re missing instead of focusing on what we have.

The act of noticing, after all, is a crucial part of gratitude; you can’t be grateful if your attention is scattered.

“Grateful living is possible only when we realize that other people and agents do things for us that we cannot do for ourselves. Gratitude emerges from two stages of information processing—affirmation and recognition. We affirm the good and credit others with bringing it about. In gratitude, we recognize that the source of goodness is outside of ourselves.”

On his days off, he goes café hopping and “gets wasted on espresso.”

It’s a key reason gratitude is so difficult to maintain, and why it takes so much effort and intention: If something is done well for us, the process behind it is largely invisible.

“Gratitude has a lot to do with holding on to a moment as strongly as possible,” Scott told me. “It’s closely related to mindfulness and savoring. Gratitude can shift our perception of time and slow it down. It can make our life’s petty annoyances dissolve away, at least for a moment.”

The point is, it’s hard to be grateful if we’re speeding through life, focusing on what’s next, as I tend to do. We need to be aware of what’s in front of us.

We overemphasize individual achievement when, in fact, almost everything good in the world is the result of teamwork.

By elevating individual achievement over cooperation, we’re creating a glut of wannabe superstars who don’t have time for collaboration.

Your typical scientist craves the glory of creating a bold new hypothesis, instead of the equally important but less flashy task of replicating experiments to make sure the conclusions are true. This has led to what’s called the “replication crisis.” A shocking amount of our scientific knowledge may be inaccurate because we don’t have enough bassists in lab coats doing backup.

I will not take my coffee lid for granted again. And over the next few days I try to appreciate all the other little hidden masterpieces of industrial design in my life. I’m grateful for the way the on/off switch on my lamp has a smooth indentation for my thumb. I’m grateful for the star-shaped holes in my spaghetti strainer. Small works of genius everywhere.

When the same coffee is served in a fancier cup, people think it tastes better. We are an easily manipulated species.

A little research revealed that coffee cup sleeves have been around since ancient times. They even have a name: zarfs.

The modern cardboard version, though, was born in 1992 in Portland and is called the Java Jacket.

When it’s effective, gratitude should be a two-way street. It should be helpful to both the thanker and the thankee. It’s not just a self-help tool, it should brighten other lives.

When I ponder the number of gratitude recipients involved, I start to get dizzy. There are the folks at the paper factory where the cardboard is made. The lumberjacks who cut down the trees for the wood pulp to make the cardboard. The metalworkers who manufacture the chainsaws the lumberjacks use. The miners who dig up the iron that is turned into the steel for the chainsaws. It’s like a particularly vicious series of pop-up ads. Every time I identify another step, I’m confronted with hundreds of divergent paths. I could write a thousand books, depending on what corridors I venture down. I remind myself: Don’t forget the folks who make the hardhats that the miners wear when getting the iron that’s turned into steel to make the chainsaws the lumberjacks use to cut down the trees to get the wood pulp to make the cup that my coffee comes in.

recently read a Wharton study that concluded that people who say the phrase “I am grateful” are seen as more genuinely thankful than when people simply say “thank you.”

the exterior shapes the interior.

our speech and actions change our thoughts.

“It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.”

Grateful people volunteered to help far more often. They paid it forward.

It’s much easier to be grateful for a good thing (a raise at work, a delicious meal) than for the lack of a bad thing. But both are important.

Larry’s coworker gives us some final words of wisdom before we head off. “Never, ever, ever run in a steel mill. Unless Larry runs. Then run real fast.”

flash back to an article I read a few weeks ago. The idea was that, yes, three dollars for a cup of coffee is ridiculously high. Practically felonious. But if we paid American minimum wage to all the people on the chain, coffee would cost about $25 a cup.

I should really be thanking my own mom, especially on this day. It seems odd that birthday celebrations are all about the kid, when they should really be honoring the mom.