Should I encourage students to keep a gratitude journal?
The short answer is yes! To understand why, here鈥檚 something I wrote about gratitude journals for as a :
Think of a person in your life you鈥檙e grateful for鈥攚hy are you grateful for them?
This is a standard prompt for one of the oldest and most reliable gratitude interventions ever studied: the .
A few years ago, right around the holidays, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a New York Times declaiming the perils of gratitude journals, gratitude letters, and other exercises designed to strengthen your appreciation muscle.
鈥淎ll you have to do is to generate, within yourself, the good feelings associated with gratitude, and then bask in its warm, comforting glow,鈥� Ehrenreich observed, skeptically. 鈥淚f there is any loving involved in this, it is self-love.鈥�
shows that, in fact, the emotional experience of gratitude is complex.
One finding: Gratitude is uplifting. Thinking about people who have helped you feels good, particularly insofar as it reinforces your sense of social connection.
And yet, at the very same time, gratitude brings a sense of indebtedness. After all, the researchers point out, 鈥淧eople feel grateful when they recognize that someone has done something for them that they did not necessarily earn.鈥�
Indebtedness, in turn, motivates action. In other words, gratitude is a sense of abundance that, rather than turning your attention inward, inclines you to reach out and help others.
For example, when I wrote my , I was reminded to pay forward his kindness. Remembering how generous Walter had been with his time made me realize how comparatively stingy I can be with mine. Soon afterward, when a colleague asked if I would read and comment on the paper he was preparing, I leapt at the opportunity.
顿辞苍鈥檛 mistake gratitude for self-love. In fact, gratitude heightens connections and feelings of indebtedness to others.
Do take a moment to think about a person in your life who has been kind to you in some way鈥攁nd how you can pay it forward. Your generosity may, in turn, spark another鈥檚 gratitude, creating a ripple effect of goodness.
