Learning to be grateful

I’ve been taking this free Yale online class on the “Science of Well-Being” for the past couple weeks (h/t Cody’s Curations), and the best part of the class has been these weekly accountability calls with Cody to discuss what we’ve learned.

The biggest takeaways from the class thus far have been the following:

• GI Joe Fallacy: knowing is less than half the battle. In many cases (and especially where real-world decisions are involved), it can be a mere fraction of the battle.
• Based on the work done by Sonja Lyubomirsky, happiness is 50% genetics, 10% life circumstance, and 40% your actions, attitude, or optimism.
• Our strongest intuitions about what’s going to make us happy (e.g. money, good job, marriage) are often wrong.

On our first call I asked Cody, “So you seem like a naturally happy person…why are you taking this class?”

Cody laughed and said, “I am generally pretty happy, but since we’re all in quarantine I thought that this is the best time to learn more about the science behind it.”

Since “knowing is less than half the battle,” the class has weekly “rewirements” in addition to the online video lectures. “Rewirements” are simply practices that, according to science, lead to greater happiness. This past week we focused on savoring and gratitude. Gratitude is pretty straightforward, but I had some trouble relating to the suggested savoring techniques: “thinking about how lucky you are to enjoy such a moment, keeping a souvenir or photo of that activity, and making sure you stay in the present moment the entire time.“

I was telling Cody that I struggled with those techniques on a bike ride this past weekend, and he said, “Something you could try is negative visualization: what if this was the last bike ride with your friend? Would you experience it differently?”

He went on, “This is also something I learned while living abroad in Germany. In German culture, you’re expected to greet and say good-bye to every person whenever you arrive or leave a new place. I think Americans really struggled with that since it’s so different from American culture. My takeaway from that is to treat every moment and interaction as special and sacred.”

I thought that was fascinating, and was surprised I had never heard that before even though I had a couple German friends and been to Germany (albeit a long time ago). “Can you say more about your approach to gratitude?”

Cody continued, “Something I’ve been thinking about is how I’m so happy to have this time with my dad. He’s taught me so much over the years, and I don’t know how much longer he’ll be around for. And stepping back, I’m just grateful to having been born in America – that’s already like winning the lottery.”

It was my turn to laugh, “Wow, so this isn’t how I think at all.”

“That’s okay…thanks for sharing that. And you know, I’m grateful that you’re my accountability partner, to keep me on track for this class.”

“Thanks, I’m grateful for you too.” And I was, for both his perspective and earlier suggestion on negative visualization.

It was funny how different I was from Cody. On a happiness scale of 1-5, where 5 = Cody and 1 = no happiness, I’m probably around a 3, so there’s some opportunity for improvement (hence why I’m taking the class).

Also, I don’t know about you, but sometimes it’s easier to keep track of what annoys me instead of what I’m grateful for. Such was the case this past weekend as I was filling out my gratitude journal…I couldn’t help but add a separate section for things that annoyed me:

• Being woken up from my nap by my roommate since his car needed a jump start (it wasn’t his fault, but I hadn’t been sleeping well, and I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards).
• A subpar takeout experience at Von’s Chicken since they messed up my order, and I felt bullied by the register into tipping for a takeout order.

On one hand I fully recognize this sounds petty of me — restaurants are struggling right now, and I’ve been in the practice of tipping for takeout during quarantine anyway — but on the other hand, what am I going to blog about if I don’t write about what annoys me? 😂