Gratitude

Most of us keep two lists. What we have, and what we want.

And we spend the whole day staring at the second one.

The flat’s too small. The car’s old. The job’s alright but it’s not the job. She’s nice but she’s not her.

Meanwhile the roof over your head, the mates who’d turn up at 3am and the two working legs that carried you to the pub don’t get a look in. They’re on the other list. The one you never read.

Gratitude is reading the other list. That’s all it is.

Whoever said it, it’s right. And I spent years proving the opposite, moaning about what I didn’t have while sitting on top of plenty.

Picture it as a ledger. Left column, what you’ve got. Right column, what you want.

The right column never empties. Get the bigger flat and a bigger one appears underneath it. Get the girl and someone else’s girl goes on the list. It’s not a list you finish, it’s a list you feed.

The left column is the one that’s actually true. It’s the only one that is. But it’s boring, because you already have it, and the brain doesn’t hand out dopamine for things it’s already got.

Most of our misery lives in the right-hand column. It’s where expectations live too, and I wrote about what they cost in Expectations. Same disease, different symptom.

Moving your eye across doesn’t change a single thing in either column. The flat’s still small. It just changes what you’re looking at, which turns out to be most of it.

This isn’t just a nice idea. Somebody tested it.

Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, California and Miami, 2003. They split students into groups. One group wrote down five things they were grateful for each week. Another wrote down five hassles. Ten weeks.

The grateful group felt better about their lives, were more optimistic about the week ahead and, oddly, exercised more. A third study ran the same thing with adults with neuromuscular disease. The grateful ones slept longer and woke up fresher.

Nobody’s life changed. Nobody got a payrise or a girlfriend. They just read the left column once a week.

From my own experience, the bit that matters most is the loop it breaks. Without gratitude you’re stuck wanting, and wanting is a feeling that doesn’t end when you get the thing. Read the left column and the wanting goes quiet for a bit. Not forever. For a bit. That’s enough to get on with your day.

The other half of gratitude is the half that leaves your head.

Your partner does a hundred small things you’ve stopped noticing. The brew. The washing. Remembering your mum’s birthday when you didn’t. You noticing it and saying so costs nothing, and it’s the difference between a woman who feels valued and one who’s quietly keeping her own ledger.

Same with your mates. Same with the lad at work who covered for you. A thank you that’s actually meant does more than a pint, and I say that as a man who thinks a pint does a lot.

Men are bad at this. We think it’s soft. It isn’t. Taking people for granted is what’s soft, because it’s what you do when you think they’ll always be there.

They won’t.

I believe in the Law of Attraction. The idea that what you put out, you get back. Focus on what you appreciate and more of it turns up.

I can’t prove it, and I’m not going to pretend a study does. Call it a belief, because that’s what it is.

But I’ll tell you what I’ve noticed. The men I know who are grateful for what they’ve got tend to get more. Maybe it’s magic. More likely it’s that a grateful man is easier to be around and easier to love, and people give more to men like that.

Either way the result’s the same. Take it however you like.

Before bed, write down three things from the left column. Real ones. Not “my family” in the abstract, but the actual text your brother sent you today.

Do it again tomorrow.

The right column will still be there in the morning. It always is. You just won’t be staring at it.