A Gratitude Attitude

But even if we can see that it is an effective mindset booster, 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, but in Martin Seligman’s book Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Wellbeing, he offers a research-backed approach, which he calls the Three Blessings. 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, but Sonja Lyubomirsky, 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. In Lyubomirsky’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 – ‘the gratitude visit’ – is talked about far less often but has been shown in Seligman’s research to pretty much crush almost every other happiness-boosting exer-cise.