PNTV: Thanks! by Robert Emmons (#162)

Foreign. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book which I don't have because I read on Kindle. Thanks. By Robert Emmons. Robert Emmons is one of the world's leading research scientists studying gratitude. And this book is all about this science of gratitude and is powerful. Let's jump straight in. Bunch of big ideas in the Philosopher's Note. Five big ideas we're going to cover right now, starting with 25%. That's how much people's happiness was boosted by doing a very simple thing. So here's the experiment. Robert Emmons, his colleagues bring people into a lab. They split them into three groups. The first group, once a week, they capture five things they're grateful for. The second group, once a week they capture five hassles, five things they found kind of annoying that week. And then the fifth, the third group captures five things that just happened. Events, right? Not told to think about things they're grateful for or hassles, they just capture five events. They do that once a week for 10 weeks. They're tested in the beginning and they're tested at the end of this. 10 weeks. Guess what happens? 25% boost in happiness. What? 25% boost in happiness between the people who were in the gratitude condition, where they actually kept track of the things they were excited about and grateful for and those who did not. That's amazing. It's a matter of a few minutes a week boosted their happiness by 25%. So that's huge. The number one thing we're going to get out of this is the practical application of what Dr. Robert Emmons suggests we do, which is keep a gratitude journal. Not complicated gratitude journal. Do you have one? If not, get one 25% boost in your happiness. That's nuts. Think about that for simply investing a few minutes of your time every week to capture the things you're grateful for. What's happening when you do that is you're training yourself to see the things that are going right in your life. Because too often our default mode is to see the things that are going wrong. By simply shifting to basically prime our minds to find the things that are awesome, we boost our levels of happiness. Enthusiasm, vitality, energy, clarity, attention, etc. All that goes up. That's our first big idea. The second one is sleeping pills. If you're having a tough time sleeping, the good doctor says, take some gratitude pills. Seriously, if you're sitting there, he says, count your blessings. Rather than counting sheep, count your blessings. That'll help you sleep better. Literally. This is what the research shows. People who are grateful sleep better. Therefore they have more energy the next day. It's a good thing. So if you're sitting there weighing the option of ruminating on all the things that aren't going the way you want, or having having anxiety about the things that you're afraid are going to happen in the future, have the mental awareness and then discipline to think instead about the things you're grateful for. And then make that a habit throughout your day, all day long. See what you can do. We'll talk about this a little bit more later, but see what you can do to prime yourself to see all the amazing things in your life. The guys who wrote the book the Tools talk about grateful flow. Anytime you feel a little cloud of ick sauce going over you, well, there's a sun back here. You just need to burst through the pain and the stress, etc. And one way to do that is through grateful flow by finding all the little things you can be grateful about during your day. You turn on the water to take a shower. That's a minor miracle. You can take it for granted. But how does that water even come get there hot? And who are all the people that help set that up? From the person who built your house you live in or apartment or whatever, to the individuals who maintain the water facility. So it comes to you. And there's amazing things going on all the time. We just need to make ourselves more aware of that. If you're having trouble sleeping, take some sleeping gratitude pills. Stay off of the other pills. A whole other conversation about sleep, which we're going to keep on coming back to. 5 to 1 is our third big idea here. 5 to 1, what's that? 5 to 1 is the ratio that a researcher named Gottman, John Gottman, can bring people into his lab and do fascinating things. He can watch a couple interact with one another for three minutes. Three minutes. He watches them interact with one another and he keeps track of the the positive interactions and the negative interactions. And what he's found is if individuals, couples in a relationship have a five to one relationship, five positive to one negative, they'll stay together. If they don't, if they have something closer to a one to one ratio, positive but negative, positive, negative, he can predict after three minutes of watching them with 90% accuracy, which couples will get divorced. 90% accuracy, watching them for simply three minutes, tracking their actions or physical movements, whether they move toward lovingly or away from with frustration and their words that's nuts. Five to one is the ratio we want to have if we want to have optimal, thriving relationships. And guess what? Gratitude is one of the best possible ways to increase our ratio in a positive direction. So rather than think about the little things that might annoy you, about your spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, or your kids or your colleagues, think about the things that are awesome about them. There are always plenty of things we can be grateful for in someone else. Focus on that. Your relationships will thrive when you discipline yourself to do that. You don't want to fall into this trap if you get down below that ratio. That's the third big idea. The fourth one, incompatibility. This is a good one. So this is commonly thought of across the literature, whether we're talking about ancient wisdom like Buddhism or modern science like this. But the basic idea is emotions that are incompatible with one another cannot coexist at the same time. Translated, you can't be stressed and anxious and relaxed at the same time. Try it. Try to be simultaneously super stressed and anxious and as relaxed as you've ever been. You can't do that. There's emotional incompatibility there. And you can only have one at a time. That's really good news, because if you're feeling the negative stuff, you can swap it out with the positive again. If you're feeling stressed or anxious, breathe nice, deep diaphragmic breath. Exhale. Do that. Inhale to four, exhale to six, two or three or five or 10 or 20 or 50 or whatever it takes times to get to that place where you're relaxed. The anxiety, the stress cannot coexist with that. Anger can't exist with vengeance, can't exist with forgiveness. Patience and impatience don't go together. It's a fun thing. To rock incompatibility, swap out a positive for a negative. Again, that requires you to have a very strong mind to notice, wow, I'm in negative right now. And then to be able to shift yourself to a positive takes practice. It's like a muscle. You got to build it. Final big idea here is challenges. Challenges, in short, are good. Now it's easy to be grateful. Robert Emmons tells us, when things are going great, life is awesome. Easy to be grateful. At least easier to be grateful than when life is challenging. But two things we want to know. One, it's especially important for us to be grateful when life is challenging. Otherwise you're just going to spiral out. Because gratitude, again, boosts your happiness by 25%. If you're not Being grateful during your most challenging times, when you need to be grateful the most, that's not a good equation. So focus on what you can be grateful for during the challenging times. That's kind of step one. Step two advanced work is be grateful for the challenge. Research shows Abraham Maslow back in the day said that his self actualized individuals, the key moments of growth in their lives were actually trauma and adversarial situations. They kind of kick their butts, but those challenging moments forced them to figure out who they really were and commit to deeper ideals and to live in a more engaged, invigorated style. So challenges are actually great now. It's nice to be grateful for them in retrospect. But why wait? Be grateful for the challenges. Now again, advanced work. Practice with the basic stuff. Be grateful for all the obvious stuff and some of the neutral stuff. Then you can be grateful for the negative stuff. So there you go. Super quick look at this great book. Thanks Robert Emmons. Good guy. Thank you Robert for your amazing wisdom over a lifetime. Remember, 25% boost in happiness by keeping a gratitude journal. Get yours busted out and get to work on it. And then find moments throughout your day. Don't wait for your journal. Find moments throughout the day you can appreciate. Number two, sleeping pills. Having challenging times. Sleeping. Think of things you're grateful for. Count your blessings rather than sheep. And certainly don't ruminate and expect to sleep well. Five to one. That's nuts. Five to one. Boost your ratio up with gratitude incompatibility. You can't simultaneously have two opposite emotions. So pick the good one. Not complicated. Simple, but not easy as they say. Right? Practice it. And then challenges. Be grateful, especially when things are tough. And then be grateful for the toughness, for the challenges. That's what's making us stronger again. We don't go to the gym to lift styrofoam weights. If we want to get strong, we go there to lift real weights. Well, same with life. Real challenges give us real opportunities for growth. Embrace it. Go out and rock it. I'm grateful for all your kind words and support and I hope you're doing great and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. All right, have another awesome day. See you.