6 Habits Of Grateful People: 30 Days Of Gratitude

ACROSS AMERICA — To weave gratitude into your life, think about death and loss.

That’s one of the “six habits of highly grateful people” outlined by Jeremy Adam Smith, who edits Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

The organization is a leader in the scientific study of gratitude and its place at the core of happiness and compassion, strong social bond and altruistic behavior.

As the Greater Good Science Center explains its work, it is the “science of a meaningful life.”

So, what does thinking about death have to do with that? Smith doesn’t advise becoming preoccupied with death, but “contemplating endings really does make you more grateful for the life you currently have,” he wrote in the piece about habits of highly grateful people.

Patch's "30 Days Of Gratitude" is a series of articles exploring the intentionality of gratitude and featuring bits of wisdom from Patch readers. Check Across America Patch every day through November for more stories like this.

Gratitude can be a difficult concept to grasp. It doesn’t mean problems vanish in a poof of euphoria. Life will still deliver kicks and blows, and that’s when “it’s time to turn on the gratitude,” Smith wrote, and make it a habit.

“Gratitude (and its sibling, appreciation) is the mental tool we use to remind ourselves of the good stuff. It’s a lens that helps us to see the things that don’t make it onto our lists of problems to be solved. It’s a spotlight that we shine on the people who give us the good things in life. It’s a bright red paintbrush we apply to otherwise-invisible blessings, like clean streets or health or enough food to eat.”

Here, according to Smith, are five more habits of highly grateful people:

They stop and smell the roses (or other things with pleasing aromas).

It’s more than an idiom. Smells are powerful memory triggers, and research shows that savoring positive experiences makes them stickier in your brain, which in turns benefits the psyche. The key is to express gratitude for the experience.

No entitlement: They take the good things in their lives as gifts rather than as their birthrights.

“In all its manifestations, a preoccupation with the self can cause us to forget our benefits and our benefactors or to feel that we are owed things from others and therefore have no reason to feel thankful,” according to the so-called “father of gratitude,” Robert Emmons, co-director of the GGSC’s Gratitude project. “Counting blessings will be ineffective because grievances will always outnumber gifts.”

They’re grateful for the good things in life, but also the people in their lives.

“People will glow in gratitude,” Smith wrote. “Saying thanks to my son might make him happier, and it can strengthen our emotional bond. Thanking the guy who makes my coffee can strengthen social bonds — in part by deepening our understanding of how we’re interconnected with other people.”

They’re “habitually specific” about what they’re grateful for and, therefore, habitually authentic.

“They don’t say, ‘I love you because you’re just so wonderfully wonderful, you!’ ” Smith wrote. “Instead, the really skilled grateful person will say: “I love you for the pancakes you make when you see I’m hungry and the way you massage my feet after work even when you’re really tired and how you give me hugs when I’m sad so that I’ll feel better!”

Specificity shows authenticity and genuine interest, he said, removing any suggestion the show of appreciation and thanks was sincere.

Grateful people “thank” outside the box.

It’s easy to thank someone for a great meal or something else that brings pleasure, but as Smith wrote, “here’s who the really tough-minded grateful person thanks: the boyfriend who dumped her, the homeless person who asked for change, the boss who laid him off.”

• Read Smith’s full explanation of the Six Habits Of Highly Grateful People
• Recommended reading: Smith is a co-editor of “The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good.”

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