Brian Johnson (YouTube) encourages viewers to "make every day Thanksgiving" by practicing gratitude. He presents three practical tools — the five-to-one positive-to-negative interaction ratio (from John Gottman), keeping a short gratitude/journaling practice ("five things"), and a quick mental technique called "grateful flow" — and finishes with a brief exercise: name 10 things you are grateful for. The video emphasizes small daily habits to boost happiness.
Questions this video answers
Over 90% accuracy (per the video).
As much as a 25% boost in happiness (per the video).
Quick journaling: list 10 things you are grateful for.
Chapters
Hey guys, what's up? This is Brian. Happy Thanksgiving. For those of you who are celebrating it, this video is on how we can make every day Thanksgiving. Let's make every day Thanksgiving. Now we know scientifically that appreciation, gratitude, Thanksgiving is one of the quickest and most powerful ways to boost our happiness. So today I want to quickly look at a few tools we can use and every day to boost our gratitude, our appreciation, our Thanksgiving. And then we'll end it with a little exercise. Ten reasons why we are grateful so quickly. Five to one ratio. The five things journaling and grateful flow. So five to one ratio, it's the magic ratio of appreciation. I talk about it quite a bit because it's huge. Here's the quick story the A guy named John Gottman, a researcher up in the Pacific Northwest, can bring couples into his lab and he can tell us with over 90% accuracy which couples relationship will end and which will continue to thrive. How does he do that 90% accuracy in a matter of minutes? Well, he looks at something called the five to one ratio. He looks at the number of positive interactions versus the number of negative interactions. You know, if they lean into one another, that'd be a positive interaction. If they lean away and if they say something nice versus not so nice, etc. 5 to 1 ratio, it's less than that. He can Predict with over 90% accuracy which relationships are going to end. That's huge. The magic ratio of appreciation. Now, this ratio applies not just to our marital relationships, but also to our work relationships, our relationships with our kids, with our friends, etc. So the easiest way to boost this ratio is to find things. To actively find things we can appreciate about the people in our lives. Alexander and I have had practices where we literally end each night thinking of five things we appreciate about one another. We're really excited to do that with our little man as he grows up and also obviously do it spontaneously throughout the day. So today, why don't you find five things that you appreciate about the people you love in your life and your family, et cetera, and let them know just how much you appreciate them and then make that a habit. Do it every day. Why wait? Make Thanksgiving every day. That's huge. Five things. We know that if we keep a gratitude journal. We talked about this in a prior episode of Five Things We're Grateful For. Even if we just did that once a week, we would significantly. Researchers tell us as much as 25% boost in our happiness will come from that huge gratitude. Paying attention to the things we appreciate. Then we talked about grateful flow. Anytime we're stressed, we've got a little ick cloud over our heads. We can bust through that and have the sunshine come out again through something called Grateful Flow where we imagine in that moment that we're feeling overwhelmed or stressed or icky. We imagine all the things that we're grateful for. Like my little fingers that are wandering into the camera here. So what are you grateful for? Have a grateful flow. Think of all the things in your life right now that you're Grateful flow. Grateful for. A little early for me over here. So there you go. We've got five to one ratio, the five things journaling and we've got a grateful flow. Check out the prior episode for more on this goodness. And for now, let's wrap this up. Keeping it under five minutes today with a little journal exercise. I am grateful for these reasons. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. What are 10 things that you're grateful for? I'm going to go ahead and do it myself. Got a little baby boy. I'm unbelievably grateful for my wife and his mommy is just amazing. More in love with her than ever. And I'm going to go ahead and complete these myself and have a nice Thanksgiving over here. I hope you do as well. And let's make every day Thanksgiving. I appreciate you. Thanks for all your support and positive energy with these. I love reading your comments and ideas and gratitude. So thank you and look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day. See ya.
