Adopt a Gratitude Mindset

The actual events in our lives rarely influence our well-being as much as our interpretation of these events. Decades of research have shown that focusing on positive aspects of our lives can significantly improve our well-being. Specifically, the practice of recognizing the positive things can engender gratitude for the good things in our lives and for the bad things that we have avoided.

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A field experiment asked participants to list things they were grateful for each week for ten weeks. These participants scored higher on measures of well-being than participants who did not undertake this activity (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). In another set of experiments, participants were asked to express gratitude to others for something the individual had done. In the past, it increased participants' sense of social connection to the individuals they thanked (Kumar & Epley, 2018). A recently published meta-analysis of 158 samples of more than 100,000 participants concluded that a mindset of gratitude strongly correlates with well-being (Portocarrero et al., 2020).

During the pandemic, we may have experienced gratitude in ways that we had not experienced before. We learned that being grateful and expressing gratitude does not require physical proximity and effectively maintains a social connection to others. We adapted the way we express gratitude by sending appreciation digitally and have found ways to thank those who continued to do their jobs to keep us safe. We also learned to value our health and the health of those close to us in new ways.

To help facilitate transitioning to a grateful mindset, start by reflecting on this question in the context of the pandemic:

Has my well-being increased, decreased, or is it about the same?

The purpose of this question is to trigger a reflection on our personal experiences and separate our feelings from others. Your thoughts on this question may help you evaluate or assess changes within you since the pandemic's beginning. Stepping back and reflecting on where you are as a whole may help you transcend day-to-day fluctuations in your feelings and can help inform your plans for the future.

References

Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M.E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 377–389.

Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2018). Undervaluing gratitude: Expressers misunderstand the consequences of showing appreciation. Psychological Science, 29, 1423–1435.

Portocarrero, F. F., Gonzalez, K., and Ekema-Agbaw, M. (2020). A meta-analytic review of the relationship between dispositional gratitude and well-being. Pers. Individ. Diff. 164:110101. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110101