Gratitude -> Happiness

A grateful heart is a happy heart. You hear it or read about it every once in a while, but how often have you pondered it and tried putting it into practice? Until recently, I hadn't. However, I was reading up on gratitude and came across some great articles on how gratitude can make you happy and how gratitude leads to happiness that I really liked and that I have been reflecting on quite a bit recently. I've even been trying to practice a bit more gratitude about things lately to see the effects and have been a bit surprised. I still have to deal with the same things that I have been dealing with, both greater difficulties and smaller ones, but I find that I am actually a lot happier about things.

Case in point: Every morning one of my co-workers and I share the usual pleasantries of "how are you this morning" and "how was your evening/weekend" for which I usually try to remain upbeat. However, especially in the last week or so I've found that I don't really have to try to remain upbeat about my response. Thinking back on the evenings I am usually genuinely content if not outright happy about how things went. As far as I can tell I still do the same dishes in the evening that I was doing before. I still have the same sense of tiredness that I had before. However, I'm just more happy about them.

Now, I know that not everyone wants to be bubbling with happiness all the time, but I'd very strongly suggest you give it a try. The first article I mentioned has some great reasons for why you should try gratitude. After you've read that and are convinced to give it a try, also read the second. I loved how Steve talked about two levels of gratitude.

Well, nothing like waiting until the last possible day to get things done. On the one hand, I've really gotten quite a bit done but none of that has been writing. I have actually read quite a bit more on the internet, but once again didn't write anything. And though a large part of learning and improvement is seeking out new things and experiences to learn from I really think that it also helps the learning to express the new thoughts.

One last thing before I get into an actual post: I hope to keep things short enough that it only takes about 2-5 minutes to read here. I'm not particularly eloquent with words and I'm not a professional at most things that I'll probably write on so I don't feel that I'm at all qualified to wax on about these things. Instead, I hope that they provide a little insight into what I've been thinking about lately and possibly give others ideas to think about on their own.

Anyway, I was particularly struck by the words of Elder Cook in the Sunday afternoon session of the LDS General Conference where he talked about how we should be more grateful. In particular I was struck by the quote from Brigham Young that he shared: "I do not know of any, excepting the unpardonable sin, that is greater than the sin of ingratitude."

I hadn't ever thought of it on that scale of things and I think that one definitely has to qualify in what way it's more serious than some other sins, but ingratitude is a very tragic thing. I always tend to measure my perception of a sin against how badly it affect someone else and it made me think about how ingratitude affects someone not yourself.

On the one hand one might say that ingratitude is something that only really affect the ungracious person. Sure not being outwardly grateful to someone means that they miss out on hearing the thanks, but just being ungrateful doesn't actually take something from them does it? Hence, how can it be that bad of a sin?

Right now I'm thinking that in this case it's not really a great sin of commission against someone else, but the consequences of ingratitude to one's self are potentially VERY great. Hence the gravity might be in how much you wrong yourself as well as the wrong that is caused to someone else. Comparing it against something like the theft of a physical object, you might be able to more easily make recompense in saying thank you to someone for their act, but I think that ingratitude is something that is so intrinsically linked to who someone is that it's not that simple to make recompense for. Also, you have to think about how timing changes the effects of gratitude and the ability to show gratitude to someone else. Yes there are some things which we can bring up 10 years after an act occurs but the vast majority of things for which we can be grateful are things that, unless caught very near the act, are either forgotten or it becomes a little uncomfortable for both sides to see gratitude. Take for example someone that holds a door open for you. If you give them a smile and a thank you immediately then both sides are uplifted a bit. However if you see someone 10 days later it doesn't have the same effect to give them the smile and thank you. Also, the little things tend to be more quickly forgotten.

Finally, I've recently read lots of words from different people that link gratitude to self value and happiness and happiness right now is something that you'll never be able to get back. Even further, I've seen that being unhappy and ungrateful is something that tends to rub off one others. Sure, you're not actively trying to affect them, but there are still costs to your actions and your state.

Just something to think on.

And so it begins...

Well, everybody has to start somewhere, so here's my start. I have been thinking a lot recently on being average and exactly what it means to be average. Other terms that have gone through my mind were mediocre or normal. I've often wanted to be the best at things and very often worry that I'm quite far from it in everything. You know, the idea of Jack of all Trades, Master of none. In a lot of ways, it has paralysed my self growth and kept me from experiencing a lot of the things that I might otherwise have been able to experience had I been more willing to fail or look the fool.

So, I've decided to just start writing and not care what people in general think about it. If someone reads it and thinks me an idiot or incompetent because they think I'm rubbish at writing and that I have nothing important to say, I've decided that's just fine. They will read one note from me, think me the idiot and then leave. In the end, it's not really all that important what everone else believes about me that matters. It's about how I feel about me and this is, in a way, an effort to distance my own self-image from how I think others perceive me.

On that note, I've decided that I should try to follow the advice of a blogger that I often read and be sure to write something at least twice per week. My gut instinct is to say once, but I think that twice is just enough that it would stretch me right now, and the stretch is what I'm going for. So, I'll stretch myself and put it to the public. If no one cares, then so be it. However, if anyone notices that a week has gone by in which I haven't posted anything, please drop me a line and remind me to update things. This would be an act of service on your part to me.

And with that, I'll leave with a quote from Nathan Hatch in his Opening Mass for the 2004-2005 Academic Year to the students at Notre Dame:

As we begin a new academic year, which appropriately calls each us work to our full potential, let me offer two words of advice:

Your true identity does not derive from how successful you are. All of us, from the top of the class to the bottom, derive our tremendous worth because God, our creator, knows our name, calls us sons and daughters, and takes joy in our own unique gifts. Who you are does not rest on a fickle ability to write brilliantly, to solve the experiment correctly, or climb the organizational ladder.

My second word of advice is this: living in a pressure cooker of achievement, how do we view our neighbors. Our reactions are often twofold, to envy those who seem more gifted and to look past people who seem ordinary. In his recent book on envy, Joseph Epstein notes that envy runs high in the world of art and intellect. “How little it takes to make one academic sick with envy over the pathetically small advantages won by another: the better office, the slightly lighter teaching load, the fickle evaluation of students.”

What is the answer to resenting those who break the curve and ignoring others who seem uninteresting? In his essay, The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis asks us to attend to a proper theology of the human person. He challenges us with the awesome reality of the human person, bearers of the very image of God. “There are no ordinary people,” he concludes. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization––these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, exploit. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself,” he continues, “your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”