Good Life Project - On Gratitude | Anne Lamott, Janice Kaplan & Jonathan Fields

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

We’re entering a time of year where gratitude is on our minds. And, honestly, it’s also been a year, even a season, where being thankful, noticing what’s wondrous or good, or even just not bad, well it's not always the easiest thing. And, yet, gratitude, attentiveness, and appreciation are such deeply-wired contributors to the human condition, ones that carry with them the capacity to transform nearly any experience - one of anger, one of loss, one of fear, one of anxiety, one of sadness, agitation, futility, or grief - into a moment of awakening, solace, connection and, in its highest forms, grace. There’s even powerful research on the psychological and physiological effect of gratitude and appreciation, both as a state and a willful intervention.So, we wanted to take the occasion of this week to explore a few different takes on gratitude, appreciation, and generosity-of-spirit, drawing upon conversations I’ve had over the years with famed author and social-observer extraordinaire, Anne Lamott, writer, producer, and big thinker, Janice Kaplan, and I’m also weaving in a few thoughts from one of my books, How to Live a Good Life. I hope you enjoy this exploration of gratitude, attentiveness, and appreciation, how it changes us, and why we might want to bring more of it into our experience of life.You can find Anne Lamott at: Website | Instagram | Dusk Night DawnYou can find Janice Kaplan at: Website | Instagram | The Gratitude DiariesYou can find the audiobook Jonathan's book at: How to Live a Good LifeIf you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the full-length conversations we had with Anne Lamott & Janice Kaplan.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To live a good life means to me to have loving feelings. And if I want to have loving feelings, very simple. I just have to go do a few really loving things. So we're entering this time of year where gratitude is kind of on our minds. And honestly, it has also been a year, even a season, where being thankful, noticing what's wondrous or good, or even just not bad, well, it's not always the easiest thing. And yet gratitude, attentiveness, and appreciation, they are such deeply wired contributors to the human condition, to our human condition,

to yours and mine. Ones that carry with them the capacity to transform nearly any experience, one of anger, one of loss, one of fear, one of anxiety, one of sadness, agitation, futility, or grief, into a moment of awakening, solace, connection, and in its highest forms, grace. There's even powerful research on the psychological and physiological effect of gratitude and appreciation, both as a state and a sort of intentional intervention. So we wanted to take this occasion this week to explore a few different takes on gratitude, appreciation, and generosity of spirit, drawing upon conversations I've had over the years with famed author and social observer extraordinaire Anne Lamott, writer, producer, and big thinker Janice Kaplan.

And I'm also weaving in a few thoughts of my own from one of my books, How to Live a Good Life. So excited to share these conversations and ideas with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA.

That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. May That's uvic.ca slash futuremba. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. Flight risk. Okay, so first up is an exchange I had earlier this year with renowned author Anne Lamott. She has this beautifully blunt, funny, irreverent, and deeply wise way of looking at the world. I love her thoughts on noticing and appreciating the wonderful things around us all day, every day. So here's Anne.

I think that's why I've written so much about people I'm close to who've been terminally ill, because usually it takes a terminal illness to get stripped down to what is really true and authentic about you. Because if you're very sick and maybe facing death, you're sure not going to carry around this stupid stuff about appearance and surface and trying to get even more people to like you. You're going to concentrate on what was there after all this stuff was stripped away. You're going to concentrate on what still works and what is still beautiful and nourishing about any given day instead of trying to get people to notice how well you've done

or whatever it is you've tried to do for so many years. Yeah, I sometimes wonder. It's funny, I've thought about that same thing well you've done or whatever it is you've tried to do for so many years. Yeah. I sometimes wonder, it's funny, I've thought about that same thing and I've wondered often, is there some gentler way for us to come to that place? Well, yeah. I mean, that's the point of, well, not just of Death's Night, Tom, but I would say the last 10 books is that you don't have to get terminally ill to make a decision to get real and to get into and to have the awakening you know and to just stop hitting the snooze button and to push back your sleeves and get serious about why you're here you know that's one of the chapters in dust night dawn is um in my Sunday school class, which is usually three or four kids,

you know, who might be seven or 16 that day together in class. And in Elijah, God at one point says to him, why are you here? You know, and I asked my kids that, why are you here? Well, the funny answer, of course, is always because our parents dragged us. You know, but the real answer is what you intuitively know even at 10. I'm here to discover who I am. I'm here to discover what's real and beautiful and how to be of service to others and how to just how to discover more and more about life and to be more fully alive every given day like well my kids and I will just walk around the courtyard and it's not beautifully landscaped or anything and we'll just look for signs of God or or beauty you know and we'll see like right now the daffodils are out, which are just

like in California, which are just like, each one is like a hilarious little sight gag, you know, with their big, bright schnozzes. And we'll just, and so, you know, intuitively here to pay attention. You're here to blink yourself awake again and again, stop thinking about, oh, no, what if, what if, what if, or how can I get so-and-so to do this thing that I'm sure will just make me feel so great about me, you know? And you instead look at a forget-me-nots are out right now, like the tiniest bluebells. You have to be in that space with those for 30 seconds, instead of thinking, how do I get Oprah to pay attention to this book? You know, it's like, well, maybe we'll think about that next hour. But right now, the wild mountain irises are in bloom right now. You know, they're like a Bob Dylan song.

And so lean into the wild mountain irises. Yeah. I mean, I love the return to simplicity. I know you've written about the kids in your Sunday school that if you want to help kids fall in love with God, help them fall in love with nature, which is really what you're describing. It's like, focus on the simple things that are all around us. And the natural environment too, which is really what you're describing. It's like, focus on the simple things that are all around us. And the natural environment too, which is just, on the one hand, it's simple and beautiful. On the other hand, it's gobsmackingly filled with awe. Like, how is this even possible?

Yeah. Well, you know, with my Sunday school kids, let alone with my readers, you have to learn to hold paradoxical experiences and truths without freaking out I mean if you can't deal with the reality that life is just unbelievably beautiful and that love is really the answer to everything and that we're all going to die. Then it keeps you being, you know, a nine year old for the rest of your life, trying to keep that at bay instead of saying, yes, we're all going to die. How do I live in the face of that? How do I live today? How do I live for the next few hours in the face of the fact that life is short and precious and such a trip.

You know, so all of the books from the very first novel I wrote 41 years ago, it's like these things are true, that life is a gift. And Earth has always been a very dangerous place to live. And Cain is always killing Abel and well is killing him right now while we're on the air and and that love can bring you to tears that uh response to the the public response to the mile-long lines of cars at the food banks brings you to tears and thinking about the people that are manning and womaning those food banks, and walking up and down the lines of cars and saying,

don't give up. Do you need some water? Let me try to find you some. That's what God looks like. Let me try to find you some water. I mean, it's so interesting because I think people tend towards one or the other extreme. There's a little sort of like in the middle where it's either once the veil is removed, you either tend towards nihilism

or you tend towards seeing everything as a moment of grace or at least holding the potential for grace. But I almost wonder why people default to one versus the other. What are the things that would move them from one to the other? Well, it certainly gives you some, the illusion of having some control in your life since you're blocking out half of truth and especially probably not blocking out the beautiful elements of truth, but because that would be truly crazy,

but blocking out the stuff about life and yourself and the future and climate and your family, that's scary and inconvenient. I know, and I write a lot about this in Dusk Night Dawn, that the only hope you have control as a child was to think that you were the problem, that you were the reason your parents' marriage wasn't a happier one. Because I had migraines. I mean, my family ground to a halt a couple times a month. And then I had extreme stress and OCD and an overarching anxiety disorder, which was not part of the people's consciousness in the 50s and early 60s and so if you as a child believed that you were responsible for the unhappiness then that gave you some control because you could try to do better and need less and then they'd surely be happier and then they then dad would be nicer to mom and

then there would be reaganomic trickle down and mom would be able to be less in her caffeinated neglect of trying to keep, you know, to six plates of 50s and 60s wife and motherhood in the air. So it was for me, my only hope of control. And, and it's still my default place is to think that like something goes wrong at the dining table or for my family or my beloved people or for the poor in America. And my default is how can I fix or save or rescue this situation instead of just feeling the compassion and the grief of what life has been like for most people in the last year, let alone, say, hypothetically, the last four years. And so but just my help is not usually very helpful, certainly with my family. My help is usually harmful to them because I think I have good ideas for everybody that usually have to do with how I can feel more comfortable about how they're living their lives. And so what I do frequently is I grip my own wrist and I say, honey, stop, you know, release, release, release. My son is 31 now.

He's doing a really great podcast called HelloHumans.com. He's a father of an 11-year-old child who's just a beautiful human being. And he does not need me to run alongside him on his hero's journey with juice boxes and chapstick. He needs me to be on my own emotional acre and just be blown away by all that he's done, all that he's been through, all that he's come through, and all that he's offering people in terms of how to be fully human here. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I feel like sometimes we equate control with it being the gateway to hope, whereas, you know, it's actually the exact opposite. Yes, the exact opposite. Every single thing, you know, there's a thing in the

book about having taken the 20 questions for drinking once, but substituting thinking. And, you know, have you ever missed work as a result of your thinking? Have you ever, have you ever ruined relationships? And I answered all 20 of them, you know, because we're addicted to the thinking and the thinking, you know, is really for entertainment purposes only. We were intellectuals and atheists when I was a young, when I was a child and we worship thinking that means we worship east coast powerful white men because those were the thinkers of the

culture and so this stuff gets very deeply inside of you and you have to have the awareness that it's hurting you and that you're ready to try something new because it is sinks its teeth in you figure it out it's not a good slogan but in but it is my default slogan okay I'm going to break the code okay if I okay if I can figure you know and it's like what if I just do what I call the sacrament of ploppage you know and and sink into my chair or get up and make myself a lovely cup of tea like I would for you, like I would for a stranger who was having a tough day. I'd say, you sit right here. I'm going to go back and get you a lovely cup of tea. And I want you to sit here for a minute and promise not to think about how doomed everything is right now.

I want you to look around in the gravel for shoots, green shoots that have broken through the hard winter dirt. Yeah. I mean, it's a subtle but an incredibly powerful shift in lens. Yeah. One of the books that keeps popping in and out of the number one spot on the Times list for a couple of years now is Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps Score. And I think we're all in this moment where we're sensing that the answer is to come back into our body. Because for some reason, I think for so many of us, that's the place where the trance starts to break. Right. In breath. Right. In breath.

And even swallowing, each swallow, if you just decide to watch, to feel it, the next few swallows, you're back in the here and now, you know, you're back in the eternal, you're back in the holy moment, but you have to remember to do it. You have to remember to, it you have to remember to um the the body is just so confusing and i completely agree with what you just said but my body hurts a lot of the time i'll be 67 next month my upper arms look like hell my feet i have tendonitis and I won't stay off of them I hike every day and um and so it's a

really mixed bag and so I wrote in Death Night Dawn but also a lot in Traveling Mercies my one of my first spiritual books that you do tend to the soul through your body you know that you I do have jiggly thighs and and uh and and I have some sort of terrible cellulite disorder, you know, that should be treated more seriously at Johns Hopkins. And the other way I can heal that is that I rub really delicious smelling lotion into my thighs and I put a temporary rose tattoo on my thighs and I thank my aching feet for the million miles through life that they've brought me so far and still to come and so um but i understand when people don't want to be in their bodies because either such terrible things happen to them or they hurt now or they are deteriorating like my son who's 31 is

so handsome i mean and this is objectively speaking you can go to hello humans and see a photo of him he's actually very handsome he just shaved off his quarantine period and um and so he to me looks like a movie star like antonio banderas but to him he just sees he has a slight double chin because he's not 16 anymore i don't know how that happened since I remained so young. But and so when he looks in the mirror, he doesn't see Antonio Banderas Lamont. He sees the chin. Right. And so even, you know, we were raised this way. If you if you watch TV, which we all have and did and, you know, started doing it at early age every single commercial said if you just if we can help you change who you are and what you look like and help your body not

have any page pain or signs of aging at all then you will truly have a fulfilling life the horrible truth is that it's an inside job that if you're going to get that love and that respect that you've just so that connect that union starts inside but inside this body is um a lot of memory of of stuff that happened sometimes that we solicited and chased down sometimes it was just done to us because we were so vulnerable yeah i mean Right. I mean, it's interesting though. And I completely agree and acknowledge that, you know, sometimes we kind of don't want to just sink into our bodies because they're unhappy elements of them, you know? And yet at the same time, if we don't, then the thing that we choose to fall in love with is just the illusion of how we are.

And that creates, at least in my experience, and I wonder how you feel about this too, falling in love with the illusion while denying the reality of just your lived experience every day, it doesn't make that reality go away. So it just piles delusion on top of pain. Whereas instead, if you just acknowledge, well, yeah, this is me and this hurts and this doesn't. And at least you're still maybe dealing with the reality of physical pain or physical change, but you're not dealing with the repression of that reality as a secondary source of suffering at the same time. Does that make sense to you? Completely. Yeah, completely. And it's one day at a time and it goes slower, the healing, than we had hoped. But it all begins with this awareness that we have a habit and a way of living that we may be taking as far as

we're willing to take it you know and we really do carry so much stupid shit around in our airplanes it just keeps us flying so low like grazing the treetops when really we want to soar and so we start throwing out more and more and more of it and you know but i remember back to something you said in the 60s hearing for the first time that um that if you spend your whole life trying to get your act together, then then what do you have? You have an act. Right. Instead of a life, instead of a being, a being here nowness. Because I've been talking about salvation all this time, but really I found salvation at five in chapter books. You know, first you love being read to,

and that's really church. When one of your parents is sitting or lying beside you reading to you, then at six or five or six, you get chapter books. And this is where it all began for me. This is why I'm a writer, that somebody creates a world into which you can get completely lost for an hour.

And in getting lost, can get completely lost for an hour. And in getting lost, you get completely found. And the thing is, you put it down and you know what? It's there again when you wake up. So I give thanks for that. And it's not my world anymore. It's interesting when um the way you described your own your own shift your own awakening on an individual level um when you zoom the lens out and this is something you read about in dust night dawn right um i think i think the language you use with salvation will be local grassroots

you know and it's and and the center of it is is is love is kindness you know, and it's, and the center of it is, is, is love is kindness. You know, it's, it's not, it's not complex. It's not dogmatic. It's not cultural norms base. It's, it's so simple and it's not top down. Like this happens between one person and the next. That's right. I teach my Sunday school kids. We always, before Advent, will have like a plan of action. And one year we gave away, there are a lot of homeless people in Marin, as you know, and homeless families. And so we made little art packs for the homeless kids that were a Ziploc bag with the biggest index cards in them and colored pencils and pencil sharpeners, which you can get like 10 for a dollar at Target, because it's very hard for homeless kids to find a pencil sharpener, right? It's not a priority. And then one year I taught them that every single day they had to flirt with an old person. And it could be in line at Whole Foods, even if it was the express line and the old person ahead of you had brought coupons, you still had to tell them how much you loved their hat or how adorable their dog was. And was he friendly?

Could you pet him? Because that always makes people really happy and creates union. And so that old people are invisible, you know. And we used to, at my church before COVID, used to go to a convalescent home. And, you know, four of us would go. And all we did, what we, and we start my church before COVID used to go to a convalescent home. And, you know, four of us would go and all we did what we sang and stuff, but we, we touched their hands, we touched the back of his hands. And I always said, I am so glad to see you. Because you know what, no one else has told them that for a while. And so that's what I mean by grassroots. That's where it all begins. Yeah, it all begins with his self

love. It all begins with talking back to the governess named dread and saying, thank you for sharing. But this is actually a great weight for me. You know, if I get sick, I can, I can lose a little and not not need to be hospitalized or to say to the to dread you know what I'm really not in charge of the results of this how this book does or you know what but thank you for sharing I always thank the governess of dread for for sharing and it all starts with that commitment to talking to yourself in the way that I would talk to anyone I see today at the park with our masks, walking our dogs, the way I talk to them. And I have to remember to talk to myself that way. Oh, I'm so glad to see you.

You look great. What's your secret? You know? And often that last part is the hardest one, right? I think it's easier for us to get up to offer that to other people than sometimes to bring that back into ourselves. That's what it's about, right? It's leading with love and just over and over and over and over.

That's right. Yeah. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So hanging out in this cross-country container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life, to be here now, to remember to breathe, to get outside and to look up. You know, my pastor had that great sermon about trapping bees at the bottom of mason jars without a lid on because, you know, they walk around bitterly bumping into the glass jar and all they have to do is look up and they could fly away. So I'm going to get outside in a few minutes and I'm going to look up and I'm going to breathe in and I'm going to look for signs of the spring, you know, the new green shoots and those hilarious daffodils.

To live a good life means to me to have loving feelings. And if I want to have loving feelings, very simple. I just have to go do a few really loving things. Thank you. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to enjoyable and valuable as I did next up we're reaching deep into the archives to a conversation

with Janice Kaplan, former TV sportscaster turned producer, one-time editor-in-chief of Parade Magazine, and author of numerous bestselling books. And Janice, she shares how gratitude has become a really central part of her life, but it also always wasn't that way. Much of her life was focused on what she didn't have, what she wanted, until a research project on gratitude changed everything. Here's Janice. We're hanging out here today, and it's shortly after a new book of yours has come out. And the book is an exploration of a year in your life, but it's really also a conversation about a much bigger topic, something that has been in the sort of public sphere of interest and started been increasingly heavily researched and things like that for a while now. And that's gratitude. And I want to dive into some of

your personal experience and what you actually did for a year, because it's kind of fun and fascinating. But one of the bigger questions for me is because it's a topic that has gotten a lot of ink over the last couple of years. And you're somebody who's sort of like deeply aware of the media and the market around it. What in your mind sort of led you to think there's something that hasn't been discussed that I think would be really compelling? I think happiness was very much in the zeitgeist for a number of years. There were all sorts of big happiness books and some very successful happiness books, and it became a whole happiness movement. Yeah, no doubt.

And we were all supposed to be happy. And it started to strike me that happiness was a bit ephemeral, that much of happiness, and some of these books, by the way, were quite excellent and really dug deep, and I do admire them. But in some ways, happiness was a little bit about waiting for the events that would make us happy. And I think if you wait for events to make you happy, you can be waiting for a really long time. And you know, you've been kind enough to mention my career, and I certainly have had a great career. And I don't think I ever felt that. I think I was always thinking about what I hadn't accomplished, and what else I could do, and always looking forward, and always thinking about the next step, and the next thing that I was going to about what I hadn't accomplished and what else I could do and always looking forward and always thinking about the next step and the next thing that I was going to do. And, you know, we also were talking about my husband. I have a great husband. I don't think

I appreciated him either. You know, there are lots of other people out there. Your eyes are always wandering. I don't mean literally, but, you know, just you're always living with the other person that you might have been. And I started to realize that I was just doing that too much. And from the outside, people were always telling me what a great career I had and what a great life I had and how lucky I was. And I was wondering why I didn't feel that way. And I think it wasn't just me. I think so many of us feel like we're not quite doing what we should and that there are other people who are doing something more and that life can be more and what are we missing? And we're always looking for something that perhaps we're looking in the wrong place for. And it really took that pausing and thinking about, okay, what is happiness? What does make

you happy? And if it's not those events, if it's not that list on the resume, and my resume is as good as anybody's, and if it's not that family, and my family's as good as anybody's, what is it? And it really made me stop and think about how do you refocus and how do you rethink what's going to be really meaningful to you? Yeah. So that led you not just to explore the topic of gratitude, but also to make an unusual commitment and experiment. But I guess it kicked off partly also with some research that you were sort of involved in. Right. I got involved with the John Templeton Foundation shortly after I left Parade. And

they gave me a grant to do a survey on gratitude, a big national survey on gratitude. And it was interesting, but it wasn't a deeply emotional topic for me at the time. I was doing it as an interesting project. And the results came in and there were interesting findings like that 90% or so of people thought that being grateful made you more happy, made you happier. And that a similar number thought that when asked if they were grateful for their family and friends said, absolutely, you know, grateful for family and friends. But then when we asked people about expressing gratitude, the numbers plunged and we were at, you know, under half said that they expressed gratitude.

So great. This was a great finding for me. You know, I called it the gratitude gap. And I wrote about it. And I went on TV talking about it. But it really took a while for it to sink in on a personal level. It was still like data for other people. Absolutely.

All those other people. It's a great story. Exactly. What we were talking about before. All those other people. It's a great story. Exactly. What we were talking about before. All those other people who aren't grateful. And at some point it did sink in. And it did strike me that, oh, maybe that's what I should be focusing on. Maybe all this data could actually turn into something that would have an effect on me and have an effect on how I feel.

And so that was the genesis of it. Yeah. And what did that lead you to do? Well, I decided to, after I had done, I had spent a fair amount of time after doing that survey of doing more research on gratitude. And then I decided on a New Year's Eve that I would try to spend the next year living gratefully. And, you know, it was a New Year's Eve. I was at a nice New York party and I was wearing my nice little black dress and holding my glass of champagne and midnight was coming. And it had been a perfectly nice year.

You know, there was nothing that had gone wrong. But I tried to imagine what I wanted in the year ahead. And I couldn't actually think of anything. And that kind of scared me. You know, it was like I didn't have anything that I really desperately thought was going to make me happy in the coming year. And so that was a moment where I realized, well, it's not the events that are going to happen, you know, I'm not going to win the lottery, I'm not going to move to Hawaii. And even if I do those things, I'll find reasons to undermine them, you know, and why if they've happened, they're not as good as they should be.

And so maybe I need to take what I've just learned about gratitude and actually turn it into a year where I think about gratitude and I research it and I try to figure out what it means and I try to actually live more gratefully. And because I'm a journalist, I couldn't just kind of go ahead and do this as a memoir kind of thing. So I set it up with different categories for each month. And I actually did it by seasons that I would start with family and friends. And then I did work.

And then I did health and fitness. And then sort of the fourth quarter, I did the bigger world. And it started and it became something so much more dramatic than I had really anticipated. It really just so quickly started to change my whole attitude and my whole perspective that I was just really excited to get to do it. Yeah. And I kind of want to walk through those seasons with you a little bit, because I think there's some interesting stories to share and some interesting data. Let's just kind of explore. Let's move through the seasons together. You mentioned family as one of the places where you really explored gratitude and its application. And so you're married, you're a parent,

I'm assuming you have friends too, and colleagues. What were the big awakenings for you in sort of that season? Well, the biggest one was with my husband. And you mentioned my marriage announcement, so you know I've been married for a long time and I have a great husband, but I sort of stopped noticing him. And I think we do that in marriages. You know, our spouses become kind of the background rather than what we focus on. And, you know, psychologists have a fancy name for it.

They call it habituation, that no matter what you want or think you want once you have it, it becomes, you get used to it, you get habituated to it. And so I decided that I was going to, for that first month, for January, bring my husband, not from the background, very much into the foreground. And I was just going to start noticing the things that he did. It started one Friday night.

We were driving up. We were lucky enough to have a country house up in Connecticut, and we were driving up there, as we usually started one Friday night, we were driving up, we're lucky enough to have a country house up in Connecticut. And we were driving up there as we usually do on Friday night. And we pulled into the driveway. And I said, Honey, thanks for driving. And he said, I always drive. And I said, Yeah, I know you always drive. But you know, it's dark, it's snowing. I really hate to drive. And I'm lucky that you drive. So thank you. And he didn't say much more. And that was fine. And then a couple of other times in the course of the weekend, I thanked him for little things that he normally

did, or I appreciated something that he said. And there started to be a different vibe just over that one little weekend. And I didn't tell him at that point what I was doing. And by Sunday night, we had dinner and he said to me, Oh, thanks for cooking. And I said, I always cook. But it was at that point we started talking about what was going on. And it became a little bit of a joke, you know, in that first month. It's a little bit awkward, you know, to be thanking your husband or your spouse or your wife or whoever. And, you know, we would laugh about it. And he would get up in the morning and he would get dressed and I would tell him how great he looked.

And he would say, do I really or is this for the book? You know, so at first it was a little bit of a joke. But then it became part of our lives. And appreciating each other became part of our lives. And it's almost hard to explain how dramatically that affected us. And, again, because I was doing research, I started calling marriage counselors around the country and asking them if I could be if I was crazy. And I and I spoke to one in particular in in Illinois, who had done a lot of research into this. And he started explaining to me and sent me some research on actually the neural pathways in the brain, and how they start to change when we're

grateful or express loving feelings. And, you know, it makes sense. It's like anything else, if you lift weights, right, your biceps are going to get stronger. If you start using the neural pathways for love and gratitude, they're going to get stronger and become more potent in your life. And he told me that one of the things he has done with couples for years and years is tell them to send an email to each other every day. And it's just a simple fill in the blank. And the first part of it is, one thing you did today that I appreciated was, and just fill it in. And he told me that he always does this every day. Now, he's also married to a marriage counselor. And so I said to him, hello, why can't you just tell her? And you know, his answer was, I always mean to,

but the day gets busy. And I'm about to say something and a kid screams or the dog barks or the phone rings and then it goes away and we're eating dinner and something else is happening. And if you just take that time to pause and know that once a day you're going to appreciate the person who you're married to and you're supposed to care about more than anybody else, it's really going to make a difference. And it did. Yeah. And it's amazing to think it's not a grand gesture that we're talking about. We're talking about like just the smallest little momentary acknowledgments. One of the things that comes up for me around this, and it's not just gratitude practices, it's a lot of other things

around the sort of positive psychology work. You brought up this term habituation. So we kind of habituate to great people just being there, you know, to the person driving or the other person cooking, just because that's the roles that you, and we kind of, you know, assume that, well, they know that I appreciate that. I don't have to keep saying it. So my question is, I'm curious whether you experienced this or whether in your research, you came upon research on this. Do we also habituate to a state of gratitude? So like if you start saying all these things to your husband or like sending that email every day, do we habituate to that and it no longer has the same effect at some point? That's an interesting question.

I don't actually know the answer to it, but I think it may not have the same dramatic effect. But if you can make your baseline a little different, think how good we all are at criticizing. And, you know, we all know that our spouses could be so much better if only they would listen to us a little bit more. And so we always have great suggestions for them and for our kids, too. And so sometimes that becomes the baseline in the house for our kids, that they come home and they think, if I say this, mom or dad isn't necessarily going to say why it's great, but is going to say how I could do it better and what the next step is. It's like, oh, you got a B?

Well, how can we get an A? Right. Or, you know, we all do that. If 10 great things happen in a day and one bad thing happens, we tend to focus on the bad. We ask our kids, if our kids are telling us things and a teacher and one bad thing happens, we tend to focus on the bad. We ask our kids, if our kids are telling us things and a teacher made one negative comment, we'll just focus on that negative comment and try to find out more about it rather than shrugging it off and looking

at the positive. So I think it just becomes very much what you end up focusing on. And if you habituate to the positive things, I think that's probably a better state to be in and puts you in a better position to be able to function. Yeah. And maybe even just as you're speaking, where my mind was going, maybe even if you do habituate to a certain extent, just the practice of constantly noticing yourself, you know, heading towards that negativity bias, which our brains are, through some quirk of survival, you know, oriented towards,

and just, like, repeatedly pulling yourself back to it. No, but this is great. Like, this happened the way that I wanted it to happen, or this kind of constantly the practice of bringing you back to the place of gratitude. Even just that sort of, like, creating a perpetual shift to the place of gratitude, even just that sort of like creating a perpetual shift to acknowledging what's right rather than, you know,

minoring yourself in what's not right, that's got to have a lot of benefit. I think so. And I think that's exactly what has been most important for me. You know, my actual year of living gratefully ended almost a year ago now. And what I've been able to hold on to more than anything else

is that ability to reframe things and to find myself annoyed or frustrated about something and to stop. And again, it doesn't have to be soft and sappy and, oh, the world is a beautiful place. And, you know, I did one radio interview and the interviewer said, tell me four things you're grateful for right this minute.

And I thought, that's not really what gratitude is. It's not that I'm sitting here, oh, and I'm grateful for this and I'm grateful for that, because that's just not who I am. And I think it's not who most of us are. But if we can find ourselves in a situation, whether at work or at home, where and stop ourselves and say, OK, maybe it's terrible. Maybe this is just like a really rotten day. But I want to just stop and find a moment of something that I can appreciate and stop and really just have a slightly different perspective on it. Because I think we tend to think that we're smarter and better and more intellectual if we're negative. And that we sound so much smarter if we're complaining about something. And if we remind ourselves that actually, I think many of us do our best work when we're positive,

not when we're negative. Yeah, I so agree. And we could probably go down the whole rabbit hole of negativity, bias, and media. But I think maybe we'll just set that aside. So the first season was really sort of based around how acknowledging gratitude, bringing gratitude more into day-to-day relationships changed things. Beyond your husband, did you notice sort of a broader impact, or were there specific things that you did or moments or stories that emerged that really stayed with you? Well, I noticed it with a lot of friends, because I found that when I would tell people that I was writing about gratitude, their instant reaction would be, oh, that's great.

I should do more of that. It's like we all have an instinct. Right. It's like, let me put it on my list. Right. Exactly. We should do better on that. But there are some people who didn't get it.

And I have one friend who is a very negative person. She's lovely and delightful and upbeat in most ways. But if there's a negative to talk about in any situation, she will find it. And after a while, I was finding it almost unbearable to be with her. And I kept pointing it out to her. I kept saying, you know, trying to turn around what she was complaining about, if it was, you know, that she had to, her office had just moved, and she was way downtown, and she had to take the subway, and she hated taking the subway. Yes, but you have a great job.

Let's focus on this great job that you've had for so long. And I think some people just are resistant to that, and don't want to hear hear that and want you to realize how difficult their lives are. And she did come around. And I think she's appreciated that. And we can joke about that a lot. I had one very close friend who was really worried that I was going to lose my edge completely. And that this was going to turn me just so soft and sappy and that I was not going to be ambitious anymore. And she's a very, very successful real estate entrepreneur in the city and has built some great buildings and done some big projects. And it took her a while to come around also. And it was difficult in some ways, but I liked it because she was always challenging me. And I knew that for me, gratitude couldn't be

a pat on the back. And it couldn't be something that was just placating. If at the end of the year, I ended up saying, Oh, yes, everything is lovely, that was not going to be successful. So I had to come to terms with and perhaps she helped me do it with the idea that gratitude and ambition can coexist. And that you can appreciate what you have now, and still want more or other or, or more or other or have ambition to go ahead. But what gratitude does is it lets you stop and appreciate what you have when you have it. Rather than looking back at it 10 years later and saying, gee, I wish I had appreciated that. That notion of gratitude and ambition coexisting, I think, is so powerful. Because I think we're taught from a young age the exact opposite.

It's sort of like, you know, kid comes home from school, well, you get what you get and you don't get upset. You know, just be grateful for what you have. So it's almost like the, you know, the part of the silent part of that teaching is, and if you want more, you know, then that's not good. That means that you're not being grateful for what you have. Whereas like, I love that, you know, and I completely agree with the whole idea of, you can be immensely grateful for where you are and what you have. And at the same time, want more, you know, and if you think about it on a societal scale, too, it's like, sure, you know, we got this legislation passed, I'm so grateful we got it, or we have a peace thing going on, or we made really great inroads. But there's a lot more, and I'm grateful for that. I'm happy

that we're in a better place than we were. And, I don't want to say but, I want to say and, there's more work to be done. And that's okay. You can still have that coexisting. And I think, I feel like the seed is planted that those two can't really coexist in so many of us at a young age. Yeah, I think that's great and absolutely correct. And I hadn't thought of that in terms of kids, but you're right. When kids come home and they ask for something or want something, an answer may be, oh, just be grateful for what you have. And that's not the answer, because figuring out how you can get something else or why you want something else is okay. And I think in that survey that I mentioned before, we found that one of the places people are least likely to be grateful is

at work. And that comes both from up and down. Bosses do not say thank you. They don't want to express gratitude. And what's behind that? Well, I think it's that fear that, first of all, they think they're showing that they're powerful by not saying thank you. And they have this idea that What's behind that? a partner at a big corporate law firm. And he made a call during dinner, it was maybe eight o'clock at night. And he was obviously talking to one of his young associates. And he said, I want that on my desk at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. And he hung up and I said, so is that guy pulling an all-nighter for you? And he said, yeah, I need that tomorrow. And I said, you're going to say, this was at the end of my year of gratitude, let me make clear. And I said, you're going to say thank you to him when you come in tomorrow? He said, no, it's his job. I said, I know it's his job, but he's

staying up all night for you. Are you going to say thank you? And he said, no, probably not. And I said, okay, here's an idea. Why don't you stop at Starbucks on the way in and buy him a cup of coffee and come in and put it down on his desk and say, great job, thanks for staying up all night. And my lawyer friend got it. And he laughed. And he said, Yeah, I guess if I give him coffee, he'll stay up for the rest of the day. That's a great idea. But But the point is that we forget that that yeah, this young associate, it was his job to do this. And it was his job to pull in all night or that night. But we also want to be appreciated. We want our work to be meaningful, and we find fulfillment by people appreciating what we do. And I think executives

are making such a mistake in not understanding that people will work harder for you if you say thank you to them. People are happy for that, and that's a motivator. It's not a demotivator. And so many executives, I talk about this in the book, when I spoke to them about this, they would say, well, we say thank you with a paycheck. And, you know, that's sort of a line from Mad Men. I think Don Draper says something very similar in Mad Men. And the answer should be, no, we don't say thank you with a paycheck. We say we're paying you with a paycheck. We say thank you with thank you. They're different things. Yeah. That resonates so powerfully with me. Because people don't work for a paycheck. We say thank you with thank you. They're different things. Yeah. That resonates so powerfully with me because people don't work for a paycheck. I mean,

of course we work because we want money and we want what it buys and we want whatever illusion of security and certainty it gives us. But fundamentally, you don't get the best of people for a paycheck. And people don't devote themselves to a worthwhile cause. I mean, if you think about the enterprises where people put the most on the line, it's when they're actually not getting paid. It's the causes, it's the movements, it's the revolutions. And they will work harder and sometimes sacrifice themselves in physical and emotional ways, they would never begin to sacrifice for a paycheck because there's something bigger on the line. I so agree with you.

I think we want to be acknowledged and thanked. We do it because there's something intrinsic going on, but there's also that pat on the back feels good. Right. Yeah, no, we need to, I agree that, you know, we put, so many of us put time, huge amounts of time into things that aren't being paid. And of course, we need a base level of fair pay. And I'm not arguing against that in any way. Nor am I, we both live in New York City. But one has to complement the other. And somebody told me a story about that she was doing a project for somebody and was being paid on a monthly basis for it. And she was really dedicated to it. And she really cared about proving that she was doing, he decided he wanted her to work harder.

And he thought he would motivate her by putting it to an hourly basis. So he changed it from paying her per month to paying her per hour. And she said he completely misunderstood. It completely demotivated her because she was driven by trying to have the project right. And by having his appreciation and having the person she was working with, you know, pleased with what she was doing. When it was turned into an hourly wage, it just became a job. And that really changes it. Yeah, it's like all that research that Dan Pink shared in Drive about how doing something intrinsically and then you introduce an extrinsic motivator and it destroys the motivation. Even

when you pull it back away again, it doesn't come back. You also explored gratitude in the context of health and vitality. Talk to me a little bit about some of your exploration around what it actually does to you from a mindset and a physiological standpoint. Well, there's been a lot of research. It's become a topic of research only in the last few years. And some of the research has found that gratitude lowers your blood pressure, decreases stress, which is pretty obvious, helps you sleep better, just has all sorts of powerful physical effects. And we shouldn't be surprised. We know that there are mind-body effects in just about everything that we do. There's been a lot of interesting research

showing how gratitude and positive emotions can actually affect the immune system. And I was really, really struck by that. And, you know, it makes sense. And it's fairly complicated in a way that I won't get into right now. But it makes sense that our immune system can sense our emotions, right? Because historically, if we were feeling fear, it probably meant that something physical was going to happen to us, that a spear was going to be in our belly before too long. And so the immune system had to know to gear up to emotions like fear and anxiety. Now, when we feel fear, it's more likely because we're talking to our boss or we're being unfriended on Facebook.

And our immune system doesn't really need to gear up for that. And it turns out that, again, positive emotions like gratitude pretty much send a message to the immune system to calm down. And it lowers the inflammation in the body. And inflammation has effects on things like

headaches and stomach aches, strokes, heart attacks. Sort of being identified these days as like a major culprit in almost everything. Exactly. And so again, we don't necessarily know how all of this works, the specifics of it, but the early findings on it are pretty strong and powerful. Yeah. And there's no downside. Except for, I mean, but it's interesting that your friend brought up the potential downside of, you know, like, quote, losing your edge. Right, right. Because I think that's actually probably in a lot more people's minds than we acknowledge.

I think so. I think people think that if they're grateful, they're just going to sound silly. Like Pollyannish. Exactly. That they're not going to be able to be powerful. And I think that that's probably the key message that I would want to bring, that no, gratitude makes you more powerful. It makes people rally around you. Bosses are more successful when people like them and want to support them and want to help them. We're better in our marriage and our personal lives when we're positive and we're looking for the positive. I mean, who do you want to be around? You want to be around the people who say nice things to you or the people who are always negative?

Yeah, depends if you're an artist or not. But I've actually had a conversation specifically with artist friends where they think that, you know, there has to be a certain amount of, you know, like persistent cloud and also negativity and suffering for them to be at their best. And, yeah, at least from the research that I've seen, that's not true. I think you need to engage with life to have experiences, you know, to be able to actually mine for the way you express your art. But it doesn't necessarily have to involve fierce negativity and suffering. You know, it can be based around some pretty extraordinary things. Right, absolutely.

So let's come full circle a little bit. The name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that term out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? Wow. I think living a good life is really what you decide you want your life to be. And a good life can really, in terms of the actual things that happen, can be just about anything. But to me, and maybe it's because I've been so focused on gratitude the last few years, the good life is finding the bright

sides in life. I interviewed so many people for this book who had had really horrible things happen to them in terms of tragedies, illness, loss of children, death, horrible, horrible events, and who were able to tell me how grateful they were that a spouse had been there for them, that their friends had been around, that they were able to do positive things afterwards. Is it a good life when you've had a terrible tragedy in it? Well, again, we don't control that. And I think the good life is what you can do with what you've been handed, that there's so much, we think we can control a lot more of our lives than we can. But I think so much of it is random. And our ability to take

the positive from whatever we can find and try to make, put positivity into the world, and make the world a better place that way, is to me the way that we can all have a better life. Thank you. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals.

No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So I hope you found that valuable. I love seeing how people work with, grapple with the notion of gratitude. And finally, we're bringing it all home with, well, me. But not in conversation. Instead, I'm sharing a little bit from my book, How to Live a Good Life, with some really eye-opening research on gratitude, on what it does to and for you, along with one of

the most powerful yet rarely used gratitude interventions. So let's dive in. Tell me if this has ever happened to you. You work really hard on something. Maybe it's a project or an idea, a beautiful offering, event, or gathering. It's something you've created and put your heart and soul into. It's all done. Then you stand back to take it in. If it involves others, you invite them in or give it to them. Then it hits you. For the first time you notice. The glaring typo. The aberrant brush stroke. The missed stitch. The burned dish.

The off comment. The weird glitch that leads to an unkind review or remark. You wish you could unsee or undo it, but you can't. And now, even though everything is amazing, you can't stop thinking about the one bad thing. People thank you, compliment you, offer gratitude for what you've done. Still, you don't hear it. Your brain is trapped in a sea of negativity. As someone who is constantly creating things and putting them into the world,

I come face to face with this all day, every day. One-star book reviews, misunderstood comments, people who just don't get me, those with completely different styles or tastes, desires, or interests. Then there are the times when I've just plain screwed up. These moments and experiences aren't fun. For a long time, they would weigh heavily on me. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that they would so consume me, I would have trouble seeing and taking in the 99% that was amazing. Turns out, I'm not alone. Through an ironic quirk of evolution, our brains have developed in

a way that, on the one hand, keeps us alive, but on the other, makes us just a tad downbeat and neurotic. Not all of us, but many of us. We're wired to focus on the sucky side of life. Scientists call it the negativity bias. We latch onto the stuff that goes wrong and refuse to let go, sometimes for years. Meanwhile, the stuff that goes right, we barely acknowledge. This can lead to a pretty warped situation. From the outside looking in, we're living awesome lives and everything seems to be going right. But from the inside looking out, all we see are the stumbles or negative experiences. The drag can become obsessive and even poorly handled pull us toward not just pessimism and compulsion, but anxiety and depression. So what can we do? How do we battle this wiring?

One way is to proactively bring so many more positive experiences into each day that it becomes harder and harder to ignore how good things really are. That can help tip the mindset from down and out to upbeat and optimistic. For many, though, it's still not enough. That nasty little negativity bias, compounded by the everyday challenges life throws our way, keeps us from seeing the good, no matter how much there is. Professor Martin Seligman, known as the father of positive psychology, wondered whether there was a way to rewire our brains for positivity and pull them out of the downward spiral. Turns out, there is. Actually, there are many ways, but as Seligman discovered, one of the most powerful mood elevators is so simple,

it's easy to write off as fluff. Just some pop psychology quackery. Except it's not. So what's the key? Gratitude. Seligman realized that often negativity came from an inability to see and be grateful for what was right in life. He wondered what might happen if specific exercises forced you to acknowledge the awesome side of life and then express your gratitude for it. Would that counter the

pull of negativity? Turns out it would and it does. Over the past 10 years, gratitude has been hailed as one of the most universally effective mindset boosters and happiness enhancers on the planet. It's also been heavily researched and validated beyond the realm of anecdotal self-help. But that still leaves us with a question. How do we build gratitude? How do we break out of the doom and gloom cocoon and see more of what's right in life? One of the most popular gratitude building exercises is the gratitude journal. The idea is to regularly write down what you're grateful for. There are many variations. In his book, Flourish, A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being, Seligman offers his own research-backed approach, which he calls the three blessings.

I'll describe the process in detail below. It will be the first option in today's exploration. The blessings are actually fun to do, and they don't take much time. A quick note on how often to do them. Seligman suggests a daily approach. Sonia Lubomirsky, another leading voice in positive psychology, believes that instead of doing them daily, you should test what feels right for you. In her book, The How of Happiness, A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want, she suggests that a daily practice may start to feel forced and repetitive and cause the exercise to lose its power. In Lubomirsky's research, once a week

seemed to be the sweet spot for most people. So play with it. If it starts to feel like a rote or repetitive exercise and doesn't seem to be doing anything to lift your mood or change your view of life, spread it out a bit. The second gratitude builder is talked about far less often, but has been shown in Seligman's research to pretty much crush almost every other happiness-boosting exercise. Seligman calls it the gratitude visit, and it's the second option in today's bucket-filling exploration. Hang on to your hats. It's time to get your gratitude on. Daily Exploration

Option 1. The Three Blessings In Flourish, Seligman offers specific instructions to be followed every night for at least a week, and as long after as you like. Write down three things that went well today. They can be big things, I proposed to the love of my life and she said yes, or simple everyday things. My daughter told me she loved me and gave me a hug and kiss before leaving for school. For each of the three things, answer the question, why did this happen? Make tonight your first night. Keep track of how your lens on life and general mood change over time.

And as Lubomirsky suggests, experiment a bit to find the perfect frequency for you. Start out daily for a week. If that feels good and it's moving your mindset needle, keep it up. If not, explore once a week, twice a month, or whatever feels right for you. Option two, the gratitude visit. The gratitude visit will take a bit more work, but it will also be worth the effort. Seligman's research showed that a single experience can create changes in mindset that are still there a month later. Look back on your life and think of someone who made a difference to you. It could have been someone who helped you out when you were in need, someone who encouraged you or taught you something, or any other person who did something that made your life better.

Two other qualifiers. It should be someone you never thanked and someone who is close enough for you to visit in person. Next, write a letter to that person describing in specifics what they did for you and how it affected you. Share what you're up to now and let them know how often you revisit their kindness. It should be a full page or about 300 words. Now here's where it gets fun and also where it might challenge you a bit. Do it anyway. Call the person up and tell them that you'd love to stop by to say a quick hello. Don't tell them exactly why you're coming. You want to keep it a surprise, if you can. Then go visit your person and read your letter to them, face to face. When you return home, spend a few minutes journaling

about how the experience went and how it made you feel. Well, I hope you enjoyed this exploration of gratitude, attentiveness, and appreciation, how it changes us and why we might want to bring more of it into our experience of life. And if you love this episode, be sure to share it around, especially now. I think we all need to deepen into gratitude and appreciation. We all need to hear more ideas and stories like this. And you can listen to the full-length conversations with all of our guests today. All the episodes are linked in the show notes below. And we'll also include a link to the full audio book of how to live a good life as well,

if that's interesting to you. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk.