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Framing sunset with hands
Gratitude, or its absence, makes or breaks life satisfaction. The behavioral science is clear. Grateful people are happy people. Thankless ones are not.
At the wrong end of the continuum measuring the attitude of gratitude, we find folks like Nick, a middle-aged professional with a lucrative job who’s on his third marriage and second Mercedes. As he sees it, he is unappreciated and overlooked. Nick’s relationships with his adult children are rocky at best, he has little good to say about his colleagues or relatives, and views life as unfair, at least to him.
“My family doesn’t appreciate how much I do for them, how hard I work to keep them comfortable,” he told me, exasperated. “And the CEO of our company has no idea how much I bring to the business.”
Poor Me?
After he concluded his litany of complaints and “poor me” anecdotes, I asked him a simple question. “Do you feel lucky?” It gave him pause, during which I hoped he was recognizing some of the largesse fate has bestowed upon him—good health, intelligence, talent, looks, etc. But his next utterance was, “Not really.”
Nick is what some folks call an “ingrate.” His awareness focuses on what he doesn’t like and doesn’t have, reflecting what psychologists call a “negative cognitive bias.” He looks for the downside in most everyone and everything and largely ignores the upside.
Like the rest of us, Nick harbors his share of problems and challenges, but failing to count his blessings leaves him feeling victimized and unhappy. When saying grace at his Thanksgiving feast later this month, I doubt his utterances will prove genuine.
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Feeling Lucky?
Jane is the flip side of Nick’s attitudinal coin. Raised in a dysfunctional family, she became pregnant in high school, married the wrong guy and clawed her way through two decades of emotional abuse before entering her forties divorced and poor. Despite all that, she resolved to put her life in order, a years-long effort that is only now bearing tangible fruit. I put the same question to her. “Do you feel lucky?”
She paused, as well, during which a quiet smile rippled across her face.
“I do,” she said. “I know that sounds odd given all I’ve been through, but I do.”
Jane doesn’t dwell on the big negatives in her personal history—failed marriage, victimization, money woes, single parenthood, etc. Those downers remain a part of who she is, but she does not let them define her.
“When I made coffee this morning, a pair of beautiful cardinals were at my feeder, and that early light really set off their colors. The smell of the coffee, too, made it a nice way to start my day,” she told me, authentic happiness in her eyes.
Gratitude has less to do with our circumstances and much to do with our attitudes toward them. All lives have good and bad happenings, but we choose which receive the majority of our focus and attention. Even when the over-arching aspects of one’s life turn negative or hurtful, there remain what my mother called “small favors.” Jane, despite all else, finds and embraces those. Nick fails to acknowledge them.
Extensive research shows that being grateful is central to a satisfying and fulfilling life. Which is why Jane, who has little in life, is quite content, while Nick, who has much, remains miserable.
Like beauty, blessings are in the eye of the beholder.
