Aerobic Action with the Gratitude Journal

Any Happiness Trainer worth her salt keeps an eye on performance.

I am indebted to a New York Times article for information which supports two points which I recognise as valid from my own experience of keeping a Gratitude Journal.

How frequently are you recording in your Journal? While Three Good Things needs to be a daily exercise to boost positive emotion, it appears that recording entries in a Gratitude Journal doesn't.

The NYT article quotes Sonja Lyubomirsky on research into the beneficial effects of daily as opposed to less frequent recording. It seems that those who do this exercise once a week are happier than those who do it three times a week. This is borne out by how this exercise has evolved, in practice for me.

I started out by intending to record something every day but I found this was interfering with Three Good Things. Before long, I was down to once a week or even once a fortnight.

I noticed that I had stopped feeling coy and uncomfortable about the touchy feely element of this exercise, and neither was I struggling to build up a 'credible list'. Better still, in spite of myself, I started to savour appreciative feelings during the day. I noticed, also, that my notes were becoming more detailed and focused.

I'd like to leave you with two Training Tips for increasing your success.

To avoid feeling a total prat, and being reduced to recording stuff like "I didn't need to reboot my router today", let expressing gratitude be a response to your spontaneous please at how something has worked out. Let the feelings come to you, if you like, rather than your having to dig and sift to find them.

Savour the experience before you write. Then savour it again while you write about it. The same NYT article quotes Tal Ben Shahar as saying, "The key is not just to write it down, but to write it down mindfully -- to focus, to imagine, to re-experience." Since many good things go in threes, there's the additional opportunity to savour the experience when you re-read that page of your journal in days, weeks or years to come.

Too hot for a workout?

Exert yourself cool without leaving your post.







Brother David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk.

His take on designing a good day is for those of all faiths, and those of none.

Trying out the Gratitude Journal

This is what I'm adding to the gym's exercise workouts for November.

I'm going to keep a gratitude journal. (This one's big given that I can't even type gratitude journal without wincing.)

The inspiration came from an article, Pay It Forward, Dr Robert Emmons' account of his research, with Mike McCullough, into the benefits of expressing gratitude.

I so nearly didn't do this one.

First of all, did I want to add an exercise which seemed so similar to Three Good Things?

Then I felt squeamish about the bland, Pollyanna-ish connotations of "gratitude".

I also found talk of "expressing" gratitude slightly pious, prissy, self-satisfied, possible because I'm a defector from a denomination which regards expressing gratitude as a 'healing' emotion.

The making my mind up phase took some time. In the course of googling "gratitude journal", I came across Sarah Ban Breathnach's Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude on ebay. "Never read" is the description from several sellers and so might I not, had it been given me as a book. I'd not normally take such a title off the shelf. Putting Abundance and Gratitude in the same title?

How cool would you feel asking for the book in a store, given the unfortunate and embarrassing 'bonus' that merely enunciating the words abundance and gratitude unavoidably stretches your lips into a bland smile followed syllables later by a smug smirk? I think not.

More last minute googling brings home that I hadn't realised what an industry keeping a gratitude journal has become. Apparently it's been featured on Oprah a few times. Perhaps even the Blessed R & J, arbiters of the nation's reading?

What's in it for me?
In Pay It Forward, Robert Emmons writes:

Although I believed we’d see the benefits of gratitude, I wasn’t sure this
result would be inevitable or unequivocal. To be grateful means to allow oneself
to be placed in the position of a recipient—to feel indebted, aware of one’s
dependence on others, and obligated to reciprocate. An exercise like ours might
remind people that they need to repay the kindness of others, and they may
resent these obligations and even report strong negative feelings toward their
benefactors.

Exactly.

The workout
The participants in the experiment fell into three groups. Once a week the participants in a group which one of the groups in the study had to keep a journal briefly describing, in a single sentence, five things for which they were grateful that had occurred over the past week.

[Just so you know, another group did the "opposite", describing five hassles that had occurred that week. The group that hasn't featured yet, the control group, was asked to record five events that had affected them that week, with no indication in their brief as to whether these should be positive or negative events.]

The payback
This is definitely what your Michelin Guide would describe as Vaut le Voyage. Plus it's an exercise you only have to do once a week!

Emmons summarises the payback thus:

So I was surprised at how dramatically positive our results were. At the end of the 10 weeks, participants who’d kept a gratitude journal felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic about the future than participants in either of the other two conditions.

Those in the gratitude condition reported fewer health complaints and even
spent more time exercising than control participants did, and significantly more
time exercising than those in the hassles condition (nearly 1.5 hours more per
week). This is a massive difference. The gratitude group participants also
experienced fewer symptoms of physical illness than those in either of the
other two groups.

Your gear
No purchase is necessary. Scribble on what you've got to hand.

If you think it's necessary to have a special journal, and you don't have a yummy notebook languishing in your attic, then you could mosey down to Paperbacks and choose a fine notebook. Spend by all means if you think the guilt and pleasure will motivate you to keep up your records.

I suppose the advantage of recording your gratitude (wince,wince) in a special book, especially if its covetability is factored into its price, is that one might keep the journalling up. If its texture grabs you, if you use a pen whose ink flows smoothly, if the paper's plain (so adult, open, lacking the constraints of ruling) then the sheer tactile pleasure should provide the fix that draws you to your weekly date at the Happiness Gym House.

Now for your Bonsella

In my native country, a bonsella is the "something extra" you receive: usually something pleasant, like a surprise gift or a tip. (While we're on the semantics, it is occasionally used as a euphemism for a bribe.)

This particular refinement comes from the Scottish Centre for Confidence and Well-being where I have now come across a suggestion for using this list to influence your dreams.

Clearly, if one is having delightful dreams, which "consolidate the memories of good events" you may even be able to greet the morning with a sleepy smile rather than a shudder. So, here's how it may be possible to use the list to have a more pleasant 'nightlife'.

Here's "the drill" I found on their web site, exactly as it appears:

1. Give the positive event a name.
2. Visualise it.
3. As you go to sleep, say the name over and over. Visualise it and intend to dream about it.
4. In the morning, write down your positive dream.
5. Note your mood when awakened in the morning.

I'm a little cautious on this as I haven't tried this out, partly because I drift off to sleep with indecent speed and I'm quite happy with the range of dreams that are presented to me. However, if your sleep is restless, you might want to give it a go. However I suspect that the three good things you've been focusing on at the end of your day, may themselves have sent you off in a positive frame.

See you back in the gym soon.

Not Just One Good Thing

These workouts are about raising your levels of happiness. Not about positive thinking, optimism or self-esteem. There is a difference, but I’ll slip that in another time. Let’s get started.

Time for our warm-ups

I’m not messing you round by saving the best for last here.

In many ways this one is The Biz.

Why should we do this? Doing this exercise will make you happier. The increase in happiness from doing it, is measurable and sustained. So is the decrease in symptoms of depression.

How many circuits? In the research programmes that have used this exercise, sticking to it for a week was suggested.

Is it hard to stick to? Apparently not. People keep doing it after they’re told they can stop. (60% of the people who have been taught this exercise are still happily doing it, on their own initiative six months later. That has to beat the staying rate of January Joiners at your local gym.)

What’s my base line? If you want to get on the scales before you start, you can do that here: Happiness Questionnaires


Today’s Workout

Christopher Peterson, in A Primer of Positive Psychology (New York: Oxford, 2006), calls this exercise Three Good Things, pointing out that it’s a lot like counting your blessings. This is going to be a three step routine. Here's how...

Towards the end of the day, before you go to sleep, set aside a time to list three things that went well during the day. OK? Stop at three good things. No more, no less.

For each thing that went well, answer the question, Why did this good thing happen?

Finally, consider the question, What did I do to help make this good thing happen? Occasionally you might feel you’ve already done this, in answering the second question. Try anyway, but if you can’t answer this one more specifically, don’t worry.

Do this exercise every night for a week

Time for the Cool-down

Nearly there. Now record your answers by jotting them down.

If you find this hard to do, or you think you're not going to be terribly good at looking back on your day, you could jot candidates for the list down during the day. You could maybe keep one of those tiny notebooks from Paperchase handy for this, or one of those Muji key ring thingummies, the ones with a wad of small blank flashcards attached. But these records are not your list. You must wait until close to bedtime to do this!

If writing really isn’t your thing, then tell a dictaphone or a live person. But it is not enough to tell yourself.

Let the rest of us here in the gym know how this exercise goes.

Come on down for your first workout!

Right here. First class tomorrow.

No gym kit needed. No trainers. No leotards.

No joining fee. Not any kind of fee.

All welcome.