Holiday Survival Toolkit Part 2 – Stop Saying Thank You
Hey everyone! Welcome to the Holiday Survival Toolkit video series. Last week, we shared a tool to build positive relationships with your family that can help you experience the holidays in a more intentional way. This tool of intention is a quick way to nurture and build your family instead of stress you out!
Today we want to share the second tool in the Holiday Survival Toolkit, a tool that can help you build the kind of relationships you want in your family. It’s the tool of gratitude!
Not Your Grandma’s Gratitude
OK – we get that Thanksgiving is over. And we are willing to acknowledge (if you are!) that we’re a little tired of hearing about gratitude. (I mean, aren’t we?) Most of us have grown up learning from our grandmas, moms, dads, Girl Scout leaders, and everyone else about gratitude as a form of social politeness, a way of keeping the peace, a thing we just do.
But being grateful is so much more than sharing our gratitude over dinner once a year. And it’s more than the expected “thank you” we give when someone does something for us. Those are both nice, but today we want to share the science of gratitude, the next generation of gratitude, and how it can transform your family!
Gratitude 2.0
The ancient Roman philosopher and poet, Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”
Cicero was right and now, thanks to over two decades of scientific research, we know why this one virtue can absolutely change your life and your relationships!
Scientists have found that gratitude affects our emotional, social, physical, and spiritual well-being. It creates health, longevity, and career and relational success. It increases our self-esteem, improves our sleep, makes us more relaxed, makes us less materialistic, and increases our happiness.
But let’s just cut to the chase here – gratitude makes you extremely attractive! That may sound odd, but it’s true. Researchers have found that expressing gratitude has measurable effects on increasing your attractiveness to your partner. (Like I said…it makes you pretty!)
Any way you slice it, gratitude is one of the best ways to cultivate positive emotions and strengthen connections in your family. That’s a pretty tall order for one tiny little emotion!
Here’s Why It Works
It’s not really rocket science. For example, say that your partner got up early to make your favorite breakfast. Just thinking about that act of kindness makes you feel grateful, appreciated, and more connected to them. When you express your feelings, it makes your partner feel appreciated, grateful, and more connected to you.
Seems simple right?
The Relationship Killer
But one thing scientists have discovered is that people often take everyday kindnesses for granted. We reserve our gratefulness for the bigger things. To use the previous example, if your partner regularly gets up early to make you breakfast, chances are that you slowly overlook this gesture – you don’t feel the same gratitude – and so you don’t express gratitude for what they did.
After repeated exposure to the same emotion-producing stimulus, we tend to experience less of the emotion. The English translation? We get used to the good things that happen to us and we don’t “feel” them the same way.
Scientists call this “hedonic adaptation.” We call it the relationship killer. When we get used to our amazing spouse or kids or friends, we stop seeing the positive and start complaining, which makes us unhappy…and unhappiness is contagious!
Here’s The Good News
Gratitude is the tool that can defeat hedonic adaptation.
And gratitude is a skill: we can learn it and practice it and eventually it can become a habit…a way of life.
We want to share a couple of simple and practical ways that you can practice gratitude this holiday season with your family.
Stop Saying “Thank You”
I mean it! “Thank you” is just a general response and doesn’t take much thought or effort on your part and so it doesn’t have much effect on the receiver.
Instead of “thank you,” tell the person what you’re grateful to them for. For example, when your child takes out the trash, instead of saying “thank you,” tell them how much you appreciate how they pitch in around the house, or remember to do their chores, or how they remembered to replace the liner in the can, or anything you can think of to specifically express gratitude.
The Little Things
The key is to practice gratitude in every little way you can – don’t save it up for the big events! Each time you give the gift of gratitude, especially in the little things, it will remind your loved ones how much you care about them and it will deepen your relationship!
Changing Your Focus
You can help your family members focus on gratitude too! Here’s a great way to do that: when your child comes home from school or your partner comes home from work, what do we usually say? “How was your day?” or “How was school?”
Since negative events stick more to us than positive ones, the first thing that pops into their mind is usually all the negative things that happened that day, and so they dump them on you. Now there’s a place for that, of course, but here’s what you could ask instead: “So, tell me something that was great about your day!”
Now they might say nothing good happened the first time you try this, but if you continue to ask them that question each day, they will begin to look for something good to report back to you. And there are plenty of good things happening to them – they just haven’t noticed them. This one question will help them train their brain to look for the good during the day so they can have something to tell you!
By helping them focus on gratitude, your family will be happier, and the best part is that when you share their positive emotions, your relationship grows deeper. A study published earlier this year in Psychological Science found that people who expressed gratitude to others felt significantly closer to those people afterward. Science is a beautiful thing!
The Magic of Ordinary Moments
Knowing how effective this tool is, we’re sure you can think of many ways to use gratitude to build relationships with your family. Like maybe hiding gratitude notes in lunch boxes or maybe even include them as stocking stuffers!
The most important thing is to begin turning ordinary moments into opportunities to grow your relationships – simply by giving the gift of specific gratitude.
Regardless of your circumstances, practicing gratitude can up-level your holiday and make it happier. And beyond that, gratitude will change your life!
No Arms, No Legs, Just Gratitude
The best example of vibrant, daily gratitude I can think of is Nick Vujicic. You’ve probably heard of him. He’s an author and international speaker and has over 7 million followers on FB. And he’s one of the happiest people we’ve ever met!
The day we met Nick, I remember thinking “Wow! I have so much to be grateful for, things I take for granted every second of every day!”
This hit me so profoundly about Nick because he was born without arms or legs. When people ask him how he can be so happy despite having no arms or legs, Nick says, “I have a choice. I can be angry about not having limbs, or I can be grateful that I have a purpose – I choose gratitude.” (If you ever have a moment when you can’t muster up gratitude, just check out his website! His gratitude is definitely contagious!)
This might be a good time for us to tell each of you how grateful we are for you. You matter to us. We’re grateful that you are investing energy this holiday season in creating positive relationships in your family! Thanks for making the world a little happier!
Until next week, keep being grateful. It looks good on you!
