EVEN HAPPIER

A Gratitude Journal for Daily Joy and Lasting FulfillmentBy TAL BEN-SHAHAR

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 Tal Ben-Shahar
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-163803-6

Contents

Chapter One

Week 1 On Being Grateful

Psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough conducted a series of studies in which they asked participants to write down on a daily basis at least five things, major or minor, for which they were grateful. Participants’ responses included everything from their parents to the Rolling Stones, from waking up in the morning to God. It turns out that putting aside a minute or two every day to express gratitude for one’s life has far-reaching consequences. Compared with the control group, the grateful group not only became more appreciative of life in general but also enjoyed higher levels of well-being and positive emotions: they felt happier, more determined, more energetic, and more optimistic. They were also more generous and more likely to offer support to others. Finally, those who expressed gratitude also slept better, exercised more, and experienced fewer symptoms of physical illness.

I have been doing this exercise daily since September 19, 1999 (three years before Emmons and McCullough published their findings), when I heard Oprah tell her viewers to do it—and so I did! From around the time my son David turned three, we have been doing a variation of this exercise together. Every night I ask him, “What was fun for you today?” and then he asks me the same question. My wife and I regularly remind ourselves what we are grateful for in each other and in our relationship.

When we make a habit of gratitude, we no longer require a special event to make us happy. We become more aware of good things that happen to us during the day, as we anticipate putting them on our list. The gratitude list can include the name of a person you care about, something that you appreciate that you or someone else did, or an insight that you had as a result of writing in this journal.

What are the things that you are grateful for? What do you appreciate in your life?

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EXERCISE Daily Gratitude

Each day this week, write down at least five things for which you are grateful. The key when doing this exercise is to remain mindful, not to take this exercise for granted. One way of remaining mindful is by visualizing or reexperiencing whatever it is that you are writing down. For example, as you write down “parents,” see them in your imagination; if you write down “conversation with partner,” try to reexperience the same feelings you had while conversing with your partner.

After this week, during which I recommend you write down daily gratitudes, continue doing this exercise at least once a week. Because the benefits of doing this exercise are so significant, I have dedicated space in this journal for writing down your weekly gratitudes.

“What you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it. Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.”

—Oprah Winfrey

Chapter Two

Week 2 Rituals

There is much research suggesting that change—learning new tricks, introducing a new behavior, replacing old habits—is extremely hard. Most attempts at change, whether by individuals or organizations, fail. In their book The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz provide a different way of thinking about change: they suggest that instead of focusing on cultivating self-discipline as a means toward change, we need to introduce rituals.

Initiating a ritual is often difficult, but maintaining it is relatively easy. Top athletes have rituals: they know that at specific hours during each day they are on the field, then in the gym, and then they stretch. For most of us, brushing our teeth at least twice a day is a ritual and therefore does not require special powers of discipline. We need to take the same approach toward any change we want to introduce.

According to Loehr and Schwartz, “Building rituals requires defining very precise behaviors and performing them at very specific times—motivated by deeply held values.” For athletes, being a top performer is a deeply held value, and therefore they create rituals around training; for most people, cleanliness is a deeply held value, and therefore they create the ritual of brushing their teeth.

If we hold our personal happiness as a value and want to become happier, then we need to form rituals around that too.

What have you tried to change and did not succeed? What new behaviors or resolutions did you try to adopt and did not?

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WEEKLY GRATITUDE LIST

This week, I am grateful for:_______________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________

EXERCISE Creating Rituals

Come up with two rituals that you believe would make you happier. It could be starting to meditate for fifteen minutes every evening, going on a date with your spouse on Tuesdays, taking four deep breaths first thing when you wake up in the morning, pleasure reading for an hour every other day, spending two hours each Sunday afternoon on your hobby, and so on.

Once you identify the rituals you want to adopt, enter them in your planner and begin to do them. New rituals may be difficult to initiate; over time, usually within as little as thirty days, performing these rituals will become as easy and as natural as brushing your teeth.

Throughout this journal, you will be encouraged to set rituals. Introduce no more than one or two rituals at a time and make sure they become a habit before you introduce new ones. As Tony Schwartz says, “Incremental change is better than ambitious failure…. Success feeds on itself.”

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

—Aristotle

Chapter Three

Week 3 Physical Activity

More and more studies in the area of mind-body medicine show the mental health benefits of physical exercise. Michael Babyak and his colleagues at Duke University Medical School, for example, showed that exercising three times a week for thirty minutes each time was as helpful for patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder as taking an antidepressant. Moreover, those who were on the drug were four times more likely to relapse into depression once the intervention ended than those who exercised.

Is exercising, then, like taking an antidepressant? Not exactly. In essence, not exercising is like taking a depressant. We have the need for exercise, and when this need is not fulfilled, we pay a price. We were not made to be inactive, sitting in front of a computer screen all day, or spending our days in meetings. We were made to run after an antelope for lunch, or run away from a lion so that we don’t become lunch. We frustrate a physical need when we don’t exercise, and when we frustrate a need—whether of vitamins, proteins, or exercise—we pay a price. John Ratey, a Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry, says:

In a way, exercise can be thought of as a psychiatrist’s dream treatment. It works on anxiety, on panic disorder, and on stress in general, which has a lot to do with depression. And it generates the release of neurotransmitters—norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine—that are very similar to our most important psychiatric medicines. Having a bout of exercise is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin, right where it is supposed to go.

And, I should add, with the potential positive side effects of increased self- esteem, improved mental functioning, a longer life span, better sleep, better sex, and a stronger immune system. Whether we suffer from depression or simply want to be happier, we should use this natural “wonder drug” more often.

Exercise, it must be stressed, is not a panacea, and sometimes drugs are important—each case of depression or anxiety is different, and some people may be helped by drugs and not by exercise.

How do you feel after exercising? What form of exercise do you enjoy most?

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WEEKLY GRATITUDE LIST

This week, I am grateful for: ______________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________

EXERCISE Move It!

Commit to a ritual of physical exercise, beginning today. This month, you could start by going for a ten-minute walk three times a week. Next month, you could increase the time you spend exercising, until eventually, you are exercising four times a week for forty-five minutes each session. Below, write down your commitments for the next six months. You may want to contact a friend or a family member to embark on this ritual together, something that will significantly enhance your likelihood of staying the course.

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“It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.”

—Cicero

Chapter Four

Week 4 The Work Paradox

In their article “Optimal Experience in Work and Leisure,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Judith LeFevre show that people prefer leisure to work, a conclusion that no one would find startling. However, they also discovered something else: that people have more “flow” experiences at work. Flow is about being in “the zone,” fully immersed in whatever it is that we are doing, performing at our best (peak performance), and enjoying ourselves (peak experience).

This paradox—that we say we prefer leisure at the same time that we are having our peak experiences at work—is strange and revealing. It suggests that our prejudices against work, our association of effort with pain and leisure with pleasure, is so deep-rooted that it distorts our perception of the actual experience. When we automatically and regularly evaluate positive experiences at work negatively, simply as a learned response, we are severely limiting our potential for happiness—because in order to be happy we must not only experience positive emotions but also evaluate them as such.

Can you learn to see your experience of school or work as a privilege? What do you enjoy in the experience? Are you able to enjoy it? Do you know people who exemplify a life of pleasurable work?

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WEEKLY GRATITUDE LIST

This week, I am grateful for: ______________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________

EXERCISE Education Program

The happiest and most successful people are lifelong learners; they constantly ask questions and never cease to find wonder in the world around them. Regardless of where you are in your life journey—whether you are fifteen or one hundred and fifteen, whether you are a student or have worked in the same office for twenty-five years—create an education program for yourself.

Your program should include these two categories: personal development and professional development. Under each category, commit to learning material that will yield both present benefit and future benefit. Put aside regular times each day for your education.

For example, under the personal development category, you could commit to reading a chapter of Nathaniel Branden’s The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem each day. For professional development, seek out a mentor you trust and ask him or her to join you for lunch, or attend a seminar on the latest developments in your industry.

Think about the relationship between these activities, the personal and the professional. Were there things about both that were enjoyable, and is there overlap between the two? If so, can you identify a common theme in both “work” and “pleasure” that you enjoy?

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“In a culture that sometimes equates work with suffering, it is revolutionary to suggest that the best inward sign of vocation is deep gladness—revolutionary but true.”

—Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

Chapter Five

Week 5 Meaning

Marva Collins was a schoolteacher in Chicago’s inner city in the early 1970s, a place where crime and drugs were rampant and hope and optimism were scarce. In 1975 Collins founded a prep school for children in her neighborhood. The students, many of whom had been rejected from other schools and deemed unteachable, learned to read Shakespeare and Emerson by the fourth grade. For more than twenty years, Collins struggled financially to keep the school alive and was often on the verge of closing. But she never lost sight of her vision, recognizing happiness as the ultimate end. Reflecting on one of her students, Collins says, “It is worth all the sleepless nights wondering how I am going to balance our deficits to see the glow in [his] eyes that will one day light the world.”

Collins could have made a fortune, and in the 1980s she was even offered a position as secretary of education, but she loved to teach and believed that she could make the most significant difference in the classroom. Teaching gave her life meaning that she believed no other profession could give her; teaching gave her the emotional gratification that no amount of money could buy. She felt she was “the wealthiest woman in the world” and that her experiences as a teacher were worth more to her than “all of the gold in Fort Knox” because happiness, not wealth or prestige, is the ultimate currency.

What, for you, is worth all of the gold in Fort Knox? If you can’t think of anything you’ve already done that has that much meaning, can you envision something in your life that would provide that kind of wealth in the currency of happiness?

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WEEKLY GRATITUDE LIST

This week, I am grateful for:_______________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________

EXERCISE Create a Meaning Map

For a period of a week or two, keep a record of your daily activities. At the end of each day, write down how you spent your time, from a fifteen-minute session responding to e-mails to a longer, two-hour period of watching TV. This does not need to be a precise, minute-by-minute account of your day, but it should provide you with a sense of what your overall day looks like.

At the end of the week, create a table that has the name of the activity, how much meaning and pleasure it provides, and the amount of time you spent on it. Next to the amount of time, indicate whether you would like to spend more or less of your time on the activity. If you’d like to spend more time, write “+” next to it; if you’d like to spend a lot more time doing it, put down “++.” If you’d like to spend less time on the activity, put a “-” next to it; for a lot less time, write “-.” If you are satisfied with the amount of time you are spending on a particular activity, or changing the amount of time you spend on it is not possible for one reason or another, write “=” next to it.

Are there things that you do not currently do that would yield high profits in the ultimate currency? Would going to the movies once a week contribute to your well-being? Would it make you happier to devote four hours a week to your favorite charity and to work out three times a week?

If you have many constraints and cannot introduce significant changes, make the most of what you have. What happiness boosters—brief activities that provide you both present and future benefits—could you introduce in your life? If a one-hour commute to work is uninspiring but unavoidable, try to infuse some meaning and pleasure in it. For example, listen to audio books or to your favorite music for part of the ride. Alternatively, take the train and use the time to read. As much as possible, ritualize these changes.

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“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.” —Carl Jung

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Excerpted from EVEN HAPPIERby TAL BEN-SHAHAR Copyright © 2013 by Tal Ben-Shahar. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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