Harvard Positive Psychology Lesson 6: Gratitude can make us happier.

Lesson 6: A tonic for an active life-Gratitude can make us happier.

1. People's adaptability is easy to forget gratitude.

2. Negative deviation is easy to forget gratitude.

3. The benefits of gratitude

4. Practice gratitude and form the habit of gratitude.

1, people's adaptability is easy to forget gratitude.

There used to be a joke that a young man had a free breakfast at work every day. He doesn't like eggs, so he gives them to a beggar at the door every day. Later, when the young man got a girlfriend, he stopped giving eggs to beggars. He leaves eggs for his girlfriend to eat every day. As a result, the beggar was very angry and said, why are you so selfish and don't give me more eggs when you have a girlfriend?

Why does this person think so? It turns out that this egg belongs to the boy himself. You don't know how to thank someone for giving it to you for so long. When people stop giving it, you still call people's names.

This is people's adaptability. People are always good to you. When you get used to it, you feel that this is what the other party should do and you deserve it. In fact, you may think about it carefully, but you have adapted yourself and forgotten to thank each other and forget to be grateful. Don't think that only this beggar has this problem. Everyone may have some. For example, if you adapt to the care of people around you and enjoy it every day, you don't think you should thank each other. Some couples, one of them always pays more and the other adapts, so they think it's right. There may be such gratitude between parent-child relationship and parents, which is forgotten because of adaptation.

2. Negative deviation is easy to forget gratitude.

What other factors make us forget to be grateful? Negative deviation in psychology.

What is negative deviation?

A bad impression is easier to form than good impression, b bad things have a greater impact on people than good things, and c bad words and deeds have a greater impact on relationships than good words and deeds.

For example, if you go to a city, the public transportation and hotel catering services in this city are very good. As a result, my wallet was stolen, and I will have no good impression when I mention this city in the future. Why? Because negative deviation will lead to a deeper bad impression than a good one.

Once a team did a simple experiment. For example, boyfriend and girlfriend, if the other person says I don't love you, how do you think he pretends to say I love you? The average of men If a girlfriend says she doesn't love herself and then expresses her love for herself three times, it's basically even. What about a woman? Some women even say that as long as this man says: I don't love you anymore, there is basically no chance.

Why is there a negative deviation? There is a saying that it is due to genetic inheritance. For example, if our ancestors saw good things in the field, such as ripe fruits, they were happy, but their attention was definitely not as good as that of tigers. Why? Because if you don't eat fruit, then you won't starve to death, but if you don't pay attention, then you may be eaten. Paying attention to bad things can keep us away from danger. Those ancestors who didn't pay enough attention to bad things, that is, those who didn't pay too much attention to tigers and lions, are estimated to have been eaten up by wild animals, and such genes have no chance to be preserved. When you find a good fruit in the forest, you don't need immediate feedback, because it will still grow there. If you don't react immediately when you see a tiger, it is estimated that the tiger is still there and you are not. Therefore, the genes we have preserved for thousands of years will naturally lead us to pay more attention to negative things, because this feature is to save our lives, and negative events have a greater impact on us. We said that once bitten, twice shy, that's what we mean.

So how can we avoid the bad results caused by this deviation? Learn to be grateful.

3. The benefits of gratitude

If we learn to be grateful, we won't get used to the good things we have got. We appreciate the beautiful things around us and express your gratitude, which will also add value to the beautiful things. Some surveys show that gratitude can enhance our immunity and make us healthier and live longer. Because when we are grateful, the function of parasympathetic nervous system is enhanced, which makes us calm and strengthens the immune system.

Knowing how to be grateful and putting gratitude into action can also help us overcome difficulties with a good attitude and make us harvest a better future.

Gratitude is divided into two objects, one is gratitude to people and the other is emotional gratitude to things.

When we go home for the New Year, we will say thank you to my parents for raising me for many years, which will certainly promote good family relations. I will always thank my partner for his little efforts to make him more willing to pay for your feelings.

Therefore, the advantage of thanking others is to make our interpersonal relationship more harmonious, more quality and more meaningful, and to make ourselves more popular and increase our manpower.

When faced with difficulties, some great people tend to be grateful for events that ordinary people think are very difficult and frustrating.

There was a burglary in President Roosevelt's home, and many things were stolen. He thought that his friend would write to comfort her when he knew about it. As a result, he wrote back and said, thank you for writing to comfort me. I have nothing to be sad about, because first, the thief stole my things and didn't hurt my life. Second, the thief managed to steal some of my things, not all of them. Third, fortunately, the thief was him, not me.

Do you remember Steve Jobs' most famous speech at Stanford University? The whole speech was full of gratitude. First of all, he mentioned that he was glad that I could find my interest when I was young; Especially when it comes to being kicked out of the house by Apple, which he founded, he said this:

I didn't realize this at the time, but it turned out that being fired from Apple was the best thing in my life. Because the heaviness of being a successful person is replaced by the lightness of being an entrepreneur: I am no longer so confident about anything. This makes me feel very free and can enter the most creative stage in my life.

He said that after he left Apple, he founded Pixar and Next, met and fell in love with his wife, and made Toy Story. Later, when Apple acquired Next, he was able to take charge of Apple again. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple, he said. This thing itself is a bitter medicine, but I guess the patient needs it.

Emotional kindness to things will make us look at problems from different angles, and it is easy to develop a relatively mature mental model, and it is easier to find the motivation for transformation from setbacks and difficulties, which is conducive to long-term happiness and success in life.

4. Practice gratitude and form the habit of gratitude.

Gratitude practice

There are two daily gratitude exercises. Let me give you a brief introduction.

1. Gratitude Diary: Anyone who has studied positive psychology may know that this is called three things to be grateful or five things to be grateful, which means starting to record things that happen in daily life and deserve your gratitude every day, and recording three or five things every day. When you can form a habit, you can adjust the frequency according to your feelings, for example, change it to recording once a week or recording once every two weeks. According to the survey, people who have done this exercise can reduce the depression index.

2. Grateful Visit: Find someone who has helped you, write a written thank-you letter, find a more formal occasion, design something with a sense of ceremony, read your thank-you letter to him in person, or use other methods, such as inviting him to dinner or paying him a formal visit. When expressing your thanks to her, you should be formal and solemn, not too casual, and show sincere and sincere thanks. Then you can communicate with him and discuss your thoughts on this matter.

Writing a gratitude diary may be for people or things, and the gratitude visit is mainly for the people you want to thank. You are grateful to her, but you don't formally express it. These two exercises are small gratitude exercises in positive psychology, which can help you improve your gratitude ability and gradually form the habit of gratitude.

Thirdly, gratitude can enhance our immunity and make us healthier and live longer. Because when we are grateful, the function of parasympathetic nervous system is enhanced, which makes us calm and strengthens the immune system.