236. Gratitude or Happiness: Which Comes First? (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 236 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about the brainy benefits of gratitude. Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about the Brainy Benefits of Gratitude at the end of the year, I always like to do episodes about reciprocity, gratefulness, happiness and planning, and this year is no different. One thing that is new this year is that we have two episodes every week, including our Tuesday refreshes. So this episode from November 2019 on the Brainy Benefits of Gratitude gets another day in the sun and I'm so grateful for it. I really enjoy this episode as it looks at the difference between happiness and gratitude and how they might not work the way we think they should, which you will of course learn all about in the episode today. Here's something to think about as we start do you have to get what you want to be happy? Is synthesized happiness or manufactured happiness the same as natural happiness? What's best for your overall psyche and those around you? As we jump into the episode, don't forget there are links to past episodes as well as related books and articles all waiting for you in the show notes which are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 236 gratefulness and reciprocity have an important thing in common, a tie that can bond them together, which is a feeling of happiness and joy. Doing things for others. Giving things away can help you to feel happier. And as you learned in that episode on reciprocity, they want to give something in return and they can feel good from receiving and from giving. It creates a nice virtuous cycle that I like to extend beyond the holiday season, though this is the perfect time of year to talk about this sort of thing. If reciprocity is the act of helping someone else to be a little happier, and it should not be done solely with the intent of getting something back, as it really defeats the purpose. Giving away things, even in business, needs to be genuinely about that thing and not just about what you'll get back. I give away podcast episodes and free worksheets and the ebook and content on social media to help people learn more. Yes it's nice when people come to do work with me and I love when they do this as it is a business, but it's if they don't. I still love hearing from fans of the show from around the world who got a little tidbit or learned a little something from the content. It truly is its own gift in so many ways, and one of the reasons that works for me and my business is my filter of gratitude and gratefulness. I am so grateful and appreciative of every new subscriber and comment and conversation with someone after they heard me speak about behavioral economics on a stage or on Twitter and their whole outlook has shifted. I love those moments. They make me happy. And it turns out there is a scientific reason for that in his 2004 TED talk, the Surprising Science of Happiness, Harvard professor of psychology Dan Gilbert shares about what really makes us happy and how we can help ourselves to be happier in everything we do. He runs the Hedonic Psychology Laboratory and wrote the book Stumbling on Happiness, a name I love by the way, and I think you'll like it even more when I share about his research here. I've linked to that and a whole lot of other things, including his TED Talk with more than 18 million views in the show. Notes for you what Dan and others have found is that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. In his talk, he asks the audience which scenario they would prefer to win the lottery or to become a paraplegic. As we talked about last week in the episode on the literary most people are motivated by winning the lottery, and pretty much everyone would pick that to most options in future life scenarios, while few, if any would choose to lose the functionality of their limbs. You chose the winning lottery ticket because you believe it will make you happier. But studies on these two groups a year after their life event of either winning the lottery or becoming paraplegic, their levels of happiness are the same. He also gives examples of the guy who almost invested in McDonald's before Ray Kroc and Pete Best, the Beatles drummer, just before they picked up Ringo and hit it big. When asked about their happiness after the fact, they and many others who have life circumstances thrust upon them said they are happier than they would have been otherwise. Pete Best has been quoted as saying he's much happier than if he would have been in the Beatles. I don't know about you, but when I hear that I think, sure, that's just something you say when you're trying to make a consolation for what you ended up With, I mean, right? Did you think something similar? This is where the brain science comes in. Gilbert tells us about how the issue is that people don't know what will make them happy. But one of the most important things the human brain does is allow us to synthesize the future, to imagine what is to come and predict how we should act for the best possible outcome. It seems easy enough because it comes to us naturally now, but it's not common among all species. Looking to the future is great because we can figure out what we want and go for it. But it also sets expectations that can cause us to get hung up if we aren't careful. It's a bit of a double edged sword. Why do we not believe that Pete Best is actually happier than if he had been the Ringo of the Beatles? It's based on our view of natural happiness and synthetic or manufactured happiness, which we believe to be inferior. Natural happiness is a product of getting exactly what you want. I worked hard and practiced like crazy and put in the effort and was part of arguably the most famous band of all time. If I was Pete Best in that winning scenario. Synthetic happiness is what we get when we don't get what we wanted. This is the one we see as less than the consolation prize you settle for and try to put a silver lining on, but it isn't really as good. Or is it? You probably see where this is going and why it ties into gratefulness. It turns out synthetic happiness, not getting what you want but still being happy about where you are is just as enduring and every bit as real to the brain as if you got exactly what you wanted or thought you wanted. We really and truly do create our own reality. And understanding how your brain looks at these situations can help you to be happier through a filter of gratitude. He gives two other examples in the TED talk that I really, really love. First is asking people to rank six Monet paintings from top favorite to least favorite, where one is your most favorite. After they had rated them all, the researchers say, hey, we just happen to have two prints here. If you'd like, choose one to take home. And they're always the ones the subject ranked as 3 and 4 on the list. So they don't love either. And they're pretty equal in liking potentially arbitrary placements on the list. Most everyone chooses to bring home the one they ranked as three and then they're on their way. So what happens next? A little while later, they're asked again to rank the same six paintings. It stands to reason they should have the Same exact ranking since they just did this a bit earlier. But as you can probably guess, there's always a little twist. What happens time and time again is that the painting, which was four, the one they didn't pick, is pushed back and is now ranked number five. This is your brain essentially saying, it's even worse than I thought. What a great decision I made to reinforce itself. And painting three, the one you did choose and took home, has swapped up now, claiming the number two spot again, your brain reinforcing itself. But this is more than just the endowment effect, which I've talked about on episode nine. And Gilbert knows this because his team tested this on people with anterograde amnesia, those who can't form new memories. They went through the same process, ranked their paintings, chose to keep number three, and were told it would be mailed to them. The researchers left and came back 30 minutes later. The patient didn't remember them or the experiment and could not pick the painting they owned out of a lineup. But when asked to rank them by preference again, this time just 30 minutes later, when they had no memory of owning one or being through the process, they did the exact same swaps. Four became five and three became two. The one they got but didn't really want or ask for made them happier when they saw it again, even if they didn't realize it had ever happened. Amazing, right? You can be grateful and appreciate things and have them make you happier, even if you don't remember going through the process before. The last study I want to talk about from Gilbert, which ties incredibly well back to behavioral economics, is the impact of choice on happiness. This is another place where we think we'll be happier if we have more options and choices, return policies, and the option to change our mind whenever possible. But as alluded to on the series and Choice Architecture and also the overwhelmed brain, there is such a thing as too much choice, and it's a lot less than we think. As Gilbert puts it, freedom to choose is the opposite of happiness. He talks about a photography class they put together at Harvard where students learned to use a darkroom. And at the end of the class, they picked their two favorite prints. Then they have to choose one to give up, saved by the class for posterity, and one to keep. One group is told they have some time to change their mind. They can swap over the coming days, and it will be super easy to do. So you can reach out to me by phone or email. I'll even bring the picture to your dorm room to swap it out if you Want. The other group is told their choice is final. The picture they don't choose is going in the mail in two minutes and gone forever. So who was happier with their choice? Our brains assume the one with the option will be happier. But as it happens, those who were stuck and had no room for deliberation after the fact, for counterfactual thinking, which we've talked about on the show, they were much happier than those who had the option to ruminate. Even after the option to make the swap was over, they continued to dwell on whether they made the right choice or not, and overall feel much less satisfied with their choice. Those who were stuck had no reason to ruminate and counterfactualize and were considerably happier. They loved their picture and were glad that they chose it and were able to move forward and just be happy about it. Those who had the option to think about it didn't feel good about their choice and weren't happy in it. As time went on, and to prove our brains don't know what they want, the team went on to offer two courses the following term. Students were told up front that they could either be in a class where they pick their top two pictures and one goes away immediately and they can never revoke that choice, or in the other format, they can have some time to deliberate and make sure they're happy with their choice. Two thirds of the students chose the option with lots of time to deliberate. So that means 66% of Harvard students chose to be in a course where they're basically guaranteed to be dissatisfied with the result at the end. Kind of a bummer when you think about it, which is why I wanted to bring it to your attention so you can be more aware as you move forward from this moment in all the choices that you make, and know that these things are scientifically proven first. Not getting what you want can make you just as happy or happier than if you had gotten what you set out. For. Synthesized happiness is the same as natural happiness. Lots of choice and opportunity to ruminate are a recipe for unhappiness. And as it turns out, we don't really know what we want anyway, so it's best to be grateful for everything we do have, whether we chose it or not. And this leads to the next question, which comes first in this chicken egg scenario. It seems logical to say, and something we probably think all the time, that it's easy to be grateful when you're happy, and therefore being happy comes first. Of course, we would be wrong. And the experts, everyone from Benedictine monks to scientific researchers, to Oprah and Tony Robbins. Agree, Gratefulness comes first. An article posted by Harvard shares that Time and again, gratitude is consistently and very strongly tied to happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships. Studies show the tie between gratitude and happiness and, as I said, show us the order they need to go. In time and time again, gratitude goes first. For example, Emmons and McCullough, top researchers in the field of gratitude, led a study where participants wrote a few sentences each week. One group was to write about things they were grateful for that had taken place over the week, the second wrote about daily irritations that bugged them, and a third group was just supposed to write about events that happened with no emphasis on positive or negative. When the 10 weeks was up, the gratitude writers were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. You might have guessed that based on the focus of the episode, but would you also have guessed that they exercised more and had less visits to the doctor than those who focused on sources of aggravation? The benefits of gratitude filtering can impact all areas of your life in a positive way. If you've heard me speak or listen to the podcast for a while, you've likely heard me mention the subconscious brain acting like a filter which decides what makes it to the conscious. Because the conscious is far too slow to take in everything going on around us. I share often that the subconscious brain can do 11 million bits of information per second, compared to the mere 40 of the conscious brain. To put that another way, and something I shared recently with the Brainy Mindset course participants as I was encouraging them to filter for gratitude during this week is that means for every one piece of information your subconscious lets through, there are 275,000 other things that didn't make it. When you're filtering for gratitude, as I like to call it, you're resetting the way your subconscious is looking at the world around you, encouraging it to find good things happening so you'll have something to write about at the end of the day or week. If you're looking for irritations and bad stuff, well, you'll be sure to get the worst of the worst as your subconscious constantly filters for gunk to make you irritated and feeling bad. Another study from the University of Pennsylvania found that participants assigned to write and hand deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been thanked properly for their kindness had a huge and immediate increase in happiness scores more than anything else they tested. And the benefits of that One task lasted for a month. I want to really quickly call out the importance of of writing gratitude by hand when you can. It isn't coincidental, and there are proven reasons why writing instead of typing or simply thinking can have an even greater impact. Of course, filtering for gratitude, however you need to, is more important than not. But to give it even more benefit, writing by hand is best. Writing things by hand has tons of benefits, no matter what you're writing. I've linked to other posts, from Oxford to Mental Floss, sharing about how it can improve sleep, reduce stress, make you happier and more creative, stimulate and fully engage the brain, ease depression and anxiety, especially when writing in cursive. Slow down mental aging, increase focus, retention and attention. The list goes on. One reason writing by hand does all these things is because it forces you to slow down and do one of the things you hear me say all the time. Be thoughtful. Your brain pays more attention to things you write down, and writing while thinking uses more parts of the brain, which stimulates the creativity and moves you into new ideas and opportunities. It doesn't even matter if you keep the paper you wrote on. The act of writing, or maybe even just moving your hand as if you had a pen if one isn't nearby, can be enough to amp up your benefits. When you combine gratitude filters with handwriting, it helps it all to sink in faster and become a habit. You can use blank sheets of paper, old napkins, or gratitude journals, of which there are many to choose from. All right, we've talked about how gratitude can impact your own happiness, but it can also improve relationships. Studies have found that couples who take the time to show and share gratitude for their partner had more positive feelings toward their partner. But it goes beyond that. Sharing the good made it easier to share the bad. Those who expressed gratitude were more comfortable sharing concerns in the relationship, allowing for growth and progress together. And it's more than just couples. This also translates into the workplace. Managers who say thank you to their employees can actually see a boost in performance. In one study from the Wharton School, fundraisers making phone calls asking for donations from alumni were broken into two groups, one which did things the normal way. And the other got a quick pep talk from the director, who expressed how grateful she was for everyone's efforts. You know, there was a difference, of course, but you might be surprised at how much the employees of the university who heard the message of gratitude made 50% more calls than those who didn't hear it. It's just one more feather in the cap of gratefulness and kind words to recap and begin to close out this episode, I ask you this do you want to be happier? Do you want to sleep better and be more creative? Do you want to make those around you happier and increase performance on the job and off? Do you want better relationships and memory retention? Then it's time to filter for gratitude and start writing what you're grateful for. So what got your brain buzzing as you thought about gratitude and happiness today? Is it about how synthesized happiness is really the same as natural happiness? And that not getting what we want is often a good thing? How our brains are really bad at knowing what we want? And that time and again we've seen that being grateful first, no matter how much or how little you have, is more likely to lead to happiness than the other way around. I also love to think about the importance of writing things by hand and being able to get their importance. I'm all about writing by hand, which is why I have and use my Apple pencil on my iPad, a Christmas gift from my husband last year that I am very grateful for. Now. What about you? Will you share something that you're grateful for with me? Find me on your favorite social media channel as the Brainy Bizarre. Let's share some gratefulness, cheer and happiness here at the end of the year or whenever you're listening to this episode. The world can always use more gratitude and happiness if you ask me, and I will always want to share and celebrate with you. And of course remember the show notes for the episode with related past episodes, books, articles and of course links to connect with me on social media. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 236 and just like that, episode 236 on the brainy Benefits of Gratitude is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with the co authors of the book Solving Modern Problems with a Stone Age Mind. It's going to be a lot of fun. You won't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.

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