Ahh, Thanksgiving. For many of us regular gratitude-practicers, this extra grateful time of year can seem like a bit like more of the same. Sometimes our gratitude practices can become a bit routine, not quite as juicy as it was when we first started. And research suggests that when a practice starts to become too rote, its benefits start to wear off.

If you need a gratitude challenge this holiday season, here are three ways to take your appreciation to a totally new level.

1. Contemplate your own death.
There’s nothing like facing death to make us appreciate our lives–and sure enough, research finds that when people visualize their own death in detail, their gratitude increases. You can follow the instructions for this Tibetan death meditation, or simply set aside some time to really reflect on the following questions (which come from Enric Sala via Greg McKeown’s blog). Take each question one at a time, and try journaling an answer to each question before moving on to the next one.

What would I do if I only had a week left to live?

What would I do if I only had a month left to live?

What would I do if I only had a year left to live?

What would I do if I only had five years left to live?

What would I do if I only had a life left to live?

2. Throw a gratitude party.
One day, in the midst of planning her own 25th birthday, my good friends’ daughter Kate realized that her birthday party might not live up to her expectations. She wanted her party to be special, and she wanted to feel celebrated. She wanted the right people to come to the party, and the right food to be served. She wanted good music, and dancing, and for her friends to spontaneously make heartfelt toasts … to her, about her. And then it hit her: If she kept thinking about herself so darn much, she was bound to feel disappointed. (She might even cry at her own party, as the cliched song goes.) So she radically changed course. Here is the gist of the email I got from her:

Hello my parents’ dearest friends! First of all, THANK YOU for befriending my parents! You have given them love, acceptance, and friendship. You’ve inspired them to grow, and shared your beautiful light with them in a way that has changed their lives (and thus, mine) for the better. Thank you for that, from the very center of my heart.  

I’m writing you because I’m on a mission! As you probably don’t know, my 25th birthday is coming up, and rather than going the traditional route and having a blowout party for myself, I’m going to throw a SURPRISE party for my parents.  It’ll be a kind of “Thank You for My Birth(day)” party. I cannot wait!

My vision is to surround them with gratitude and love. I’m grateful to them for putting up with me for a quarter century, and so I want to show them in a dramatic way. What does that look like?

Here’s what I imagine: their favorite people showing up with huge smiles. Dancing. Laughter. Sharing of stories. Drinking. Some food (but I’m on a tight budget, so I may have to get creative here). A video of those who couldn’t make it. I’m open to your suggestions!

The party was better than anyone ever dreamed — for Kate and her parents, but also for all the guests. Kate gave us all the incredibly powerful gift of extreme gratitude.

3. Don’t just think about what you are grateful for, really feel it.
Another extreme form of gratitude is neuropsychologist Rick Hanson’s “taking in the good” practice. Here’s how to do it:

First, actively think of a positive experience for which you feel grateful. For example, the leaves in my neighborhood look so pretty at this time of year, and I’m grateful to have enjoyed a hike this afternoon among all the fall color.

Next, draw out — really savor — that positive experiences. According to Rick, the key is not just to hold something positive in our awareness for as long as possible, but also to remember the positive emotions that go along with it. The idea, he says, is to “turn positive facts into positive experiences.” For example, instead of just thinking “I’m grateful for the fall color,” I also reflected on how blissful I felt while outside walking. Thinking like this evokes what was rewarding about a positive event and helps use our brain chemistry to strengthen connections associated with the memory.

Finally, let it all sink in. Take this image — “sinking in” — as if it were literal. Rick invites us to later recall the positive experience — for me, the hike and seeing all the fall color — and feel that experience “entering deeply into your mind and body, like the sun’s warmth into a T-shirt, water into a sponge, or a jewel placed in a treasure chest in your heart.”

Don’t just think about what you are grateful for, really feel it. #Gratitude Click To TweetDon’t just think about what you are grateful for, really feel it.” username=”raisinghappines”]

Will you help me brainstorm other ways to practice extreme gratitude during this holiday season? Please take a moment to post your idea in the comments below. This is fun: I’ll send you a thank you gift! If you leave your email address in the comments, I’ll email you a new beautifully designed poster of my happiness manifesto that you can download and print.

References:
Frias, Araceli, Philip C. Watkins, Amy C. Webber, and Jeffrey J. Froh. 2011. “Death and Gratitude: Death Reflection Enhances Gratitude.” The Journal of Positive Psychology 6 (2) (March): 154–162.

Hanson, Rick. 2009. Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. New Harbinger Publications.

Photo courtesy of Nate Grigg via Flickr.

“But who could have foreseen . . . that he would die a happy, giving, and beloved man? Only those who understand that happiness is only the cart; love is the horse.”  – George E. Vaillant, M.D., Triumphs of Experience

If we look back at the last two centuries of research in sociology and psychology, the single strongest finding about our well-being is that our health, happiness, and longevity are best predicted by the breadth and the depth of our positive social connections — our friendships, relationships with family members, closeness to neighbors, and perhaps whether or not we know our grocery checker’s name.

People with many social connections are less likely to experience sadness, loneliness, low self-esteem, and problems with eating and sleeping, and are more likely to experience life positively.

This means that building stronger connections with people we already know, and building new and positive relationships with people we don’t know at all, can lead to a happier, healthier, more successful, and easier life. Social connections help us live and work from our sweet spots by bringing us both strength and ease.

People with many social connections are more likely to experience life positively. #FindingFlow Click To TweetPeople with many social connections are less likely to experience sadness, loneliness, low self-esteem, and problems with eating and sleeping, and are more likely to experience life positively.” username=”raisinghappines”]

Why? As it turns out, all positive emotions were not created equally. Love and the similar emotions that we experience when we feel connected socially — like affection, warmth, care, fondness, and compassion—are more powerful than the others. In Barbara Fredrickson’s words:

Love is our supreme emotion: its presence or absence in our lives influences everything we feel, think, do, and become. It’s that recurrent state that ties you in—your body and brain alike—to the social fabric, to the bodies and brains of those in your midst. When you experience love . . . you not only become better able to see the larger tapestry of life and better able to breathe life into the connections that matter to you, but you set yourself on a pathway that leads to more health, happiness, and wisdom.

The longest running study of human development, The Harvard Grant Study, has charted the physical and emotional health of over two hundred Harvard alumni since 1938 (which means that many of the study’s participants are pushing a hundred years — or pushing up daisies). The Grant Study makes it clear that “the most important influence, by far, on a flourishing life is love,” as one of the researchers behind the study, George Vaillant, put it in Triumphs of Experience.

It isn’t just that people who are more connected are the happiest people. They are also the most successful at work and at school. When college students feel a sense of belonging, their grades go up. In one study, African American college students were asked to read a short testimonial from older students about how they had been worried about fitting in but that things had turned out well. They then had to make a short video testimonial about their own experience of fitting in. This one simple intervention “led to an enduring improvement in GPA in nearly every semester of about 0.2 GPA units (for example, a GPA of 3.6 instead of 3.4),” writes UCLA neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman.

Beyond feeling a sense of belonging, an “ability to build relationships” predicts how well people do at work. This relationship capacity proved to be more highly rated than their “focus on results” in determining whether or not a manager is rated among the top 10 percent of leaders in a given company. Similarly, a person’s social skills (which are strongly related to the breadth and the depth of their social connections) are twice as important as intelligence for predicting whether or not they will emerge as a leader when they are assigned to a random team project.

And a deep well of research shows that positive social connections protect our health. Again, according to Fredrickson:

[A lack of connection] is, in fact, more damaging to your health than smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol excessively, or being obese. Specifically, these studies tell us that people who experience more warm and caring connections with others have fewer colds, lower blood pressure, and less often succumb to heart disease and stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and some cancers.

So as Winter and the Holidays approach, one of the very best things we can do to protect ourselves from the common cold, the dreaded flu, and a host of other illnesses is to reach out to those around us — our friends, family, neighbors, coworkers and even strangers.

Join the Discussion: What most makes you feel connected socially? When do you feel most lonely?

This post is based on an excerpt from Chapter 6 of The Sweet Spot.

Don’t have time for friends? Download the “How to Gain an Extra Day Each Week” eBook and learn practical ways you can start generating more time in your life and schedule for the things that matter most to you. 

Photo courtesy of Jason Kuffer via Flickr.

We are coming to that time of the year that is both blessed and cursed with zillions of invitations.

Here are some that are in my email right now: Can you meet me for coffee to help me with my book proposal? Will you bring an entree to the 8th grade teacher lunch? Are you coming to our party at the end of the month? Can you help with my son’s college applications? Do you want to take the kids to go see Beach Blanket Babylon?

As much as I’d like to do all of these things, I can’t. When I take on everything that comes my way, I find that I start staying up late in order to get everything done. And then, tired, I start pressing snooze instead of meditating in the morning. Before I know it, I’m too tired to exercise, too, something that is essential for my wellbeing. It’s a slippery slope that starts with me taking care of other people’s needs at the expense of my own, and ends with me being too tired (and sometimes sick) to take care of anybody’s needs, my own included (much less do anything fun, like go to a party). Perhaps this is obvious, but just to spell it out: When we get sick and tired, we have a hard time feeling happy, and a hard time fulfilling our potential, both at home and at work.

But saying “no” can be really hard — I hate making people feel bad for even asking. It takes practice to say no in a way that doesn’t offend people, much less to say it in a way that makes folks feel happy they asked. Giving no that good takes practice. Here is my three step plan.

Step One: Prepare yourself to say “No.”

It is much easier to say no to an invitation when we have a concrete reason for doing so–a way to justify our refusal beyond the vague notion that we should avoid the commitment in question.

This means that we need to create the reason for saying no before we need it — we need a decision-making structure, or “rules” to guide us so that we don’t have to agonize over every invitation.

For example, one rule I have for myself is that I don’t go out more than two nights in a given week, because I know that when I do this, I get cranky, tired, and run down. So if someone asks me about a third evening one week, I have the structure I need to tell them I’m not available (but thank you for asking!). Similarly, I only meet people during the workday for lunch or coffee two times per week, I only do two speaking engagements a month, and I only do one phone interview a day.

In addition to making rules for myself, I block out time on my calendar for things like writing (in the morning, when I’m most productive), hiking (in the afternoon, when I need a break), and for tackling administrative tasks (on Fridays, when I’m most inclined to want to just tick stuff off my list). This means that a lot of time on my calendar is blocked out, which can be really annoying to people who are trying to make an appointment with me. At the same time, however, blocking time out for the things I need to do to feel calm makes it totally clear to me when I’m just not available. This makes it much easier to give good no.

Finally, if I’m available to do something, I don’t say yes before asking myself a very important question: Do I want to do this thing, or is it that I feel I “should”? Will saying “yes” bring me joy or meaning? Or will I feel dread or regret when this particular event or task rolls around? I’ve learned to notice when I’m glad I said “yes”; it has helped me realize how much happiness I get from helping other people. (I always try to help my friends’ children with their college applications, for example. So fun.)

One of the joys of middle age is that I now feel confident that if I do only the things that I really feel compelled to do (rather than the things I used to do because I thought I “should” do), I end up contributing more. If I find myself considering an invitation because I’m worried about what other people think of me, or because I think it will “look good on my resume,” I just say no.

Step Two: Say no.

I’ve found it incredibly helpful to have go-to ways to just say no. I mostly use Renee’s “I’m already booked” strategy (see below), because that is most often the reason I can’t do something. Here are some other tactics — 21, count ‘em!–that work for me:

1. Vague but effective: “Thank you for asking, but that isn’t going to work out for me.”
2. It’s not personal: “Thank you for asking, but I’m not doing any interviews while I’m writing my book.”
3. Ask me later: “I want to do that, but I’m not available until April. Will you ask me again then?”
4. Let me hook you up: “I can’t do it, but I’ll bet Shelly can. I’ll ask her for you.”
5. Keep trying: “None of those dates work for me, but I would love to see you. Send me some more dates.”
6. Try me last minute: “I can’t put anything else on my calendar this month, but I’d love to do that with you sometime. Will you call me right before you go again?”
7. Gratitude: “Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and support! I’m sorry I’m not able to help you at this time.”
8. Give Dad a chance: “You know, I feel like moms are always getting to do the holiday parties at school. Let’s ask Dad if he wants to help this year.”
9. 5-minute favor: “I can’t speak at your event, but I will help you promote it on my blog.”

1.  Just No: “Thanks, I’ll have to pass on that.” (Say it, then shut up.)
2. Gracious: “I really appreciate you asking me, but my time is already committed.”
3. I’m Sorry: “I wish I could, but it’s just not going to work right now.”
4. It’s Someone Else’s Decision: “I promised my coach (therapist, husband, etc.) I wouldn’t take on any more projects right now. I’m working on creating more balance in my life.”
5. My Family is the Reason: “Thanks so much for the invite, that’s the day of my son’s soccer game, and I never miss those.”
6. I Know Someone Else: “I just don’t have time right now. Let me recommend someone who may be able to help you.”
7. I’m Already Booked: “I appreciate you thinking of me, but I’m afraid I’m already booked that day.”
8. Setting Boundaries: “Let me tell you what I can do…” Then limit the commitment to what will be comfortable for you.
9. Not No, But Not Yes: “Let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you.”(Renee’s list is from her book The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal.)

And here are the additional ways that Katrina most often says no:

1. Say nothing: Not all requests require an answer. It feels rude to ignore a request, but sometimes it’s the best way for everyone to save face.
2. Let it all hang out: Recently my daughter got injured in gym class. It was a week of visits to the ER, the concussion clinic, specialists, etc. I decided to just tell people what was going on, which sort of shut down the requests for a bit.
3. I’m “maxed out”: We need a “safety word” for saying no — an easy way to tell people that we can’t/won’t do the thing they are requesting, but that it’s not personal. One convenient thing about authoring a book called Maxed Out is that now I can say “I’m maxed out” and people who are familiar with the book know I’m asking them to respect that I’m taking care of myself, and that I also respect their need to take care of themselves.

Step 3: Don’t look back.

Plenty of research suggests that when we make a decision in a way that allows us to change our minds later, we tend to be a lot less happy with the decisions that we make. So once we decline an invitation, we need to make an effort to focus on the good that will come from saying no, not the regret or guilt we feel about turning down an offer. Perhaps we will be better rested because we didn’t go to a party, or we’ll feel less resentful because we let someone else help out. Maybe saying no to one thing frees up time for another (more joyful) activity. Whatever the case may be, focus on the positive outcome of your effort to give good no.

Because that is what all this saying no is really about: Allowing ourselves to really enjoy what we are doing in the moment, whatever that might be.

Comment below: What is your favorite way to say no?

Ever feel like you are constantly drinking from a firehose of information?

We have more information (and stuff) coming at us than ever before. In 1976, supermarkets stocked, on average, 9,000 items. Today, they stock an average of 40,000 items. According to cognitive neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, information scientists have quantified how overwhelmed by information the poor human brain is. “In 2011, Americans took in five times as much information every day as they did in 1986–the equivalent of 175 newspapers. During our leisure time, not counting work, each of us processes 34 gigabytes or 100,000 words every day.”

That’s a lot of freaking information. No wonder we feel overwhelmed.

Here are 9 of my favorite ways to regain your peace:

1. Make your bed. There is something true about the adage that the state of your bed is the state of your head.
2. Set your phone to automatically go into silent mode an hour before your bedtime. Enjoy the stillness and quiet.
3. Develop a way to “give good no.” As in: “Thank you so much for asking, but that isn’t going to work out for me right now.”
4. Turn off your TV unless you intend to watch something specific. Never watch commercials — record your show and skip through them.
5. Eat at least one meal a day without doing anything else at the same time. No driving, reading, emotionally upsetting conversations, or email.
6. Make decisions about routine things once. Buy the same brands at the grocery store every time; get the same outfit in different colors so you don’t have to decide what to wear every morning; prepare the same basic meals most week days.
7. Clean out one drawer or shelf a day. Eventually, everything in your home will have a place, and this will make it easy to find what you need when you need it.
8. Establish “predictable time off” with your colleagues and family. When will you commit to not working? Start with dinnertime, work up to weekends.
9. Stop multi-tasking. It makes you error prone, and even though you think you’re getting more done, it’s actually quite inefficient.

A lot of my new eCourse is about easing the overwhelm that comes from the busy world we live in. Check it out here!

Click on the image to download a handy printable version of my 9 Ways to Ease Overwhelm list.

People ask me all the time what the secret to happiness is. “If you had to pick just one thing,” they wonder, “what would be the most important thing for leading a happy life?” Ten years ago, I would have told you a regular gratitude practice was the most important thing, and while that is still my favorite instant happiness booster, my answer has changed. I believe the most important thing for happiness is living truthfully. Here’s the specific advice I recently gave my kids:

Live with total integrity. Be transparent, honest, and authentic. Do not ever waiver from this; white lies and false smiles quickly snowball into a life lived out of alignment. It is better to be yourself and risk having people not like you than to suffer the stress and tension that comes from pretending to be someone you’re not, or professing to like something that you don’t. I promise you: Pretending will rob you of joy.

I’ve spent the better part of my life as a people-pleaser, trying to meet other people’s expectations, trying to keep everyone happy and liking me. But when we are trying to please others, we are usually out of sync with our own wants and needs. It’s not that it’s bad to be thinking of others – that’s a key to happiness, too – it’s that pleasing others is not the same as helping others.  

People pleasing, in my extensive personal experience, is a process of guessing what other people want, or what will make them think favorably of us, and then acting accordingly. It’s an often subtle and usually unconscious attempt at manipulating other people’s perceptions of us. Anytime we pretend to be or feel something that we aren’t, we’re out of integrity with ourselves.

And anytime we’re doing something that is more about influencing what others think of us than it is about authentically expressing ourselves – even something as simple as a Facebook post that makes it seem like we are having a better day than we actually are – we end up out of integrity with ourselves.

Being out of integrity has pretty serious consequences for our happiness, and for our relationships.

Here’s what happens when we aren’t being authentic:

#1: We don’t actually fool anyone.

Say you are at work, and you’re doing your best to put on a happy face even though your home life is feeling shaky. You may not want to reveal to your work friends that you and your significant other had a major fight over the weekend, but if you pretend that you are okay – and you’re not – you’ll probably make the people around you feel worse, too. Why?

We humans aren’t actually very good at hiding how we are feeling. We exhibit microexpressions that the people we are with unconsciously register. Our microexpresssions   trigger mirror neurons in the brains of people around us — so a little part of their brain thinks that they are feeling our negative feelings. So trying to suppress negative emotions when we are talking with someone — like when we don’t want to trouble someone else with our own distress — actually increases  both our own stress levels and those of the people we are with – more than if we had shared our distress in the first place. (It also reduces rapport and inhibits the connection between two people.)

#2: We find it harder to focus.

Pretending takes a huge conscious effort — it’s an act of self-control that drains your brain of its power to focus and do deep work. That’s because performing or pretending to be or feel something you’re not requires tremendous willpower.

Tons of research suggests that our ability to repeatedly exert our self-control is actually quite limited. Like a muscle that tires and can no longer perform at its peak strength after a workout, our self-control is diminished by previous efforts at control, even if those efforts take place in a totally different realm.

So that little fib at the water cooler you told in order to make yourself seem happier than you actually are is going to make it hard for you to focus later in the afternoon. A performance or any attempt to hide who you really are or pretend to be something you aren’t is going to make it harder later to control your attention, your thoughts, and to regulate your emotions. It’ll increase the odds that you react more aggressively to a provocation, eat more tempting snacks, engage in riskier behaviors, and — this one is pretty compelling to me — you’ll perform more poorly on tasks that require executive function, like managing your time, planning, or organizing.

#3: We become more stressed and anxious.

Let’s just call it like it is: Pretending to be or feel something that you don’t – even if it is a small thing, and even if it is relatively meaningless, and even if it is meant to protect someone else – is a lie.

And lying, even if we do it a lot, or are good at it, is very stressful to our brains and our body. The polygraph test depends on this: “Lie Detectors” don’t actually detect lies, but rather they detect the subconscious stress and fear that lying causes. These tests sense changes in our skin electricity, pulse rate, and breathing. They also detect when someone’s vocal pitch has changed in a nearly imperceptible way, a consequence of tension in the body that tightens vocal chords.

The physiological changes that lie detectors sense are caused by glucocorticoids, hormones that are released during a stress response. And as you well know, stress hormones are bad news for your health and happiness over the long run.

Research shows that people who are given instructions for how to lie less in their day-to-day lives are actually able to lie less, and when they do, their physical health improves. For example, they report less trouble sleeping, less tension, fewer headaches, and fewer sore throats. These improvements in health are likely caused by the relative absence of a stress response.

And that’s not all: When the people in the above study lied less, they also reported improvements in their relationships and less anxiety.

We don’t lie or pretend or perform all the time, of course. But when we do, it’s important to see the consequences: increased stress, decreased willpower, impaired relationships. Although we might actually be trying to feel better by putting on a happy face for others, pretending always backfires in the end. Living inauthentically makes life hard, eliminating any possibility that we will find our flow, or that we will be able to operate from our sweet spot, that place where we have both ease and power.

If you need support in living life with more authenticity, I hope you’ll check out my latest eCourse, The Science of Finding Flow. You’ll learn the importance of letting yourself experience a full range of emotions in life — even pain and discomfort. In 9 self-paced units, I’ll teach you how to be happy while accomplishing your goals – and while still having energy left over for the things you want to do.

Photo by Jonathan Khoo.