The LIFT Blog

In the past week, I have been reminded of the power of moments of gratitude. Perhaps it is because I am writing in anticipation of Memorial Day, a holiday dedicated to remembering and appreciating with gratitude the sacrifices of others—but I find myself moved by the simplicity and importance of this common (but commonly overlooked at work) feeling. Many people comment that the thing they miss most at work is being thanked for a job well done. I’m sure that if you remember, right now, the last time someone offered you heartfelt thanks, you will also connect with the power of gratitude.

Researchers in psychology have begun to explore the power of gratitude through laboratory studies. In one group of studies, psychologist Robert Emmons and his colleagues [1] assigned some people to keep a weekly or daily list of things they felt grateful for, while other people kept weekly or daily lists of hassles or neutral events in their lives. After just 3 weeks, the people who had been randomly chosen to keep gratitude lists showed better measures of well-being and reported more positive emotion when compared to people in the other groups. In other studies, these effects show up in people’s health as well. Emmons suggests that practices like keeping a gratitude journal can increase happiness levels and have biological impacts on things like stress and sleep that impact overall health (click here for more highlights of research from his laboratory).

The ongoing work of researchers in the domain Appreciative Inquiry attests to the power of expressing gratitude in organizations as well. In their book Dynamic Relationships, [2] Jacqueline Stavros and Cheri Torres talk about using gratitude practices as a way of deliberately connecting with others and deepening workplace relationships. Other researchers in the Appreciative Inquiry tradition have shown the beneficial effects of gratitude in a 5-year project among nurses, [3] where some of the effects of Appreciative Inquiry include deepened cooperation and greater nurse retention, partly because the effects of gratitude on work relationships.

Gratitude isn’t something to cultivate only when we are feeling happy or appreciated, however. One of the important lessons about being a positive force in any situation is that we can learn how to become more grateful even in the face of difficulty. This is deeply resonant with Buddhist teachings that encourage people to allow difficulties to become moments of learning and insight. In one of her books entitled The Places that Scare You, [4] Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön tells a story of a cook at the retreat center who was feeling very gloomy. The cook tried to remedy her dark mood by baking chocolate chip cookies, but she burned all of the cookies and felt even worse! Rather than dumping the burned cookies in the trash, however, she stuffed them into her pockets and went out for a walk in the beautiful woods surrounding the abbey. Just as she was saying to herself, “So where’s all the beauty and magic I keep hearing about?” she looked up to find a small fox on the path in front of her, gazing up expectantly. She reached into her pocket and offered the fox some cookies. The cook came back to the retreat center and told everyone the story of the fox who had appeared on her path, telling them: “I learned today that life is very precious. Even when we’re determined to block the magic, it will get through and wake us up. That little fox taught me that no matter how shut down we get, we can always look outside our cocoon and connect with joy.” [5]

So how can you find your own little fox moments of gratitude for work and life? Here are three simple ways to cultivate the power of grateful appreciation:

1.      Begin what Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön calls a rejoicing practice.
Notice your own good fortune or things that are pleasant in your life, and actively note to yourself that you feel grateful for them. Pema Chödrön writes: “The key is to be here, fully connected with the moment, paying attention to the details of ordinary life. By taking care of ordinary things—our pots and pans, our clothing, our teeth—we rejoice in them. When we scrub a vegetable or brush our hair, we are expressing appreciation: friendship toward ourselves and toward the living quality that is found in everything.”[6] You can expand this to feeling grateful for others’ good fortune as well. Try feeling grateful for good things that happen to your coworkers.

2.      Keep a gratitude journal.
Similar to those people who found better health, heightened well-being, and more positive emotion in their lives in Robert Emmons’ studies, you can experience the benefits of gratitude by simply writing down, each day, things for which you are grateful. Emmons estimates that you may increase your happiness by as much as 25% simply by keeping a gratitude journal and regularly writing down things for which you feel grateful. You might try keeping a gratitude journal dedicated solely to your workplace as a way to become a more positive force at work.

3.      Have a gratitude check-in at your next meeting.
While most of the gratitude practices that psychologists write about are individual, work in Appreciative Inquiry shows the power of making gratitude practices public and shared. By taking just a small amount of time to encourage people to share one thing for which they are grateful in meetings or other gatherings in your organization, you just might begin to foster coordination, build workplace capacity, and revolutionize your work relationships.

With gratitude for participating in the LIFT Blog,

Monica Worline

This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 11:54 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.