It turns out that counting your blessings actually improves the quality of your life. A study of 389 adults found that gratitude was strongly correlated with a measure called Satisfaction with Life (SWL).
The researchers wrote that “grateful people were more extraverted, open, agreeable, conscientious, and less neurotic.” They also observed that “gratitude is increasingly being seen as a trait which is a major aspect of well-being.”
Similarly, a 2007 study concluded that “counting blessings seems to be an effective intervention for well-being enhancement in early adolescents.”
Evidence shows that counting your blessings increases your sense of satisfaction, and this is one of the simplest ways to feel better.
Sure, you could wait to feel good until you solve your problems, or until you shed those extra eight pounds, or until you get promoted, or until you get a raise, or until you get married, or until any number of in-your-dreams things happen.
But I hope you don’t do that. I hope you just adopt a habit of taking a minute or two each day to be grateful for your many blessings.
Stop Being a Grouch
In “Positive Psychology: An Introduction”, Martin Seligman writes about the time he was weeding in the garden with his five-year-old daughter.
He yelled at her because she was throwing weeds into the air and generally fooling around. She ran away and then came back. According to the article, here’s what happened next:
“Daddy, I want to talk to you.”
“Yes, Nikki?”
“Daddy, do you remember before my fifth birthday?
“From the time I was three to the time I was five, I was a whiner. I whined every day. When I turned five, I decided not to whine anymore. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And if I can stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch.”
At that moment, Seligman resolved to change.
At this moment, you can do the same.
(In the spirit of full disclosure, I posted this today because I was feeling a little, well, grouchy.)
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Multitasking Is Nearly Impossible
The late Stanford professor Cliff Nass studied multitasking, and in 2009 Nass described how he and his colleagues were looking for multitasking activities at which multitaskers excelled.
In an interview with the PBS program, Frontline, Nass said, “We all bet high multitaskers were going to be stars at something. We were absolutely shocked. We all lost our bets. It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking. They’re terrible at ignoring irrelevant information, they’re terrible at keeping information in their head nicely and neatly organized, and they’re terrible at switching from one task to another.”
Translation: if you think you can multitask, you are delusional.
Use fear to your advantage
Have you ever been in a situation in which you are either going down in flames or winning beyond your wildest dreams?
The fear of failure can be overwhelming. Your vision can narrow, and your brain literally stops working. You just want to run away.
But if you can harness that fear, it can become a powerful motivator. The trick is to use it as an engine for a "no choice but victory," all-out campaign.
Einstein just missed solving the greatest problem of all
Einstein showed that time is not absolute, and that time varies depending upon how fast you are moving. But—obsessed as he was with science—the great man narrowly missed discovering a scientific principle that can have a much greater impact on your life, especially at work. It is:
When you are talking, time moves faster than when you are listening.
Ask any speaker how long it feels like to deliver an hour-long presentation. The answer: about 17 minutes.
You have, no doubt, experienced the opposite effect. Think of your boss or CEO going on and on about leadership blah blah blah integrity blab blah blah and those wonderful things his high-school coach said. Endless, right?
Once you understand this principle, there is only one logical course of action. The next time you speak:
Stop talking before people stop listening.
Are you brave enough to ask better questions?
When we worked together, my friend Don Peppers used to sometimes say that I reminded him of George Ball, Under Secretary of State to President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1960s. Ball was always asking questions about the policy of escalation in Vietnam. Johnson usually listened carefully to Ball, appreciated his questions, and then ignored him.
I took this as a compliment, with full knowledge that it was not entirely intended that way.
Asking the right questions is never easy, because most people ask the wrong questions. This is not because they are dumb or naive. It is because the right questions often lead to more time, energy, and resources than seem to be available.
For this reason, the “most logical” short-term course of action is often to stick with the wrong questions. But such easy questions—and answers—will lead you into a box. They are the reason why seemingly successful companies fade into obscurity, and successful professionals “suddenly” find themselves out of a job.
Be an Engaged, Thoughtful and Kindly Presence
Talent Development 101: How To Make Ordinary Employees Great
Never Call Yourself a Visionary
If You Want to Succeed, Be More Empathetic
Are You Working for a Dinosaur?
If You're Not a Robot, Then Prove It
Your Fiercest Enemy? Routine
Why Leaders Don't Lead And Employee Loyalty Is Dead
Looking for a Job? Sell Your Destiny, Not Your History
How to Lead a Startup Like a Superhero
Three Powerful Ways to Stop Wasting Time
Your Tribe Is Not What You Think
While you have been earning a living here on Earth, Jill Tarter has spent her professional years looking for signs of intelligent life everywhere else. She was the longtime director of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program.
