Author Dr. Michael Rucker: How We Can Leverage The Power Of Gratitude To Improve Our Overall Mental Wellness

Take a moment to marvel. I take a minute each night to marvel with gratitude about how wondrous life can be. Sometimes that means reflecting on something amazing my children did that day. Sometimes it’s sitting with a piece of wisdom I learned from a mentor. Sometimes it’s contemplating infinity. There is always something to marvel in.

As we all know, times are tough right now. In addition to the acute medical crisis caused by the Pandemic, in our post COVID world, we are also experiencing what some have called a “mental health pandemic”.

What can each of us do to get out of this “Pandemic Induced Mental and Emotional Funk”?

One tool that each of us has access to is the simple power of daily gratitude. As a part of our series about the “How Each Of Us Can Leverage The Power Of Gratitude To Improve Our Overall Mental Wellness” I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Michael Rucker.

Dr. Rucker has been studying positive psychology and behavioral science for the last two decades. For the past several years, Dr. Rucker has been digging deep to understand how we think about fun, why it’s important, and how we can introduce more fun into our lives. Dr. Rucker will release his first book, “The Fun Habit,” before the end of 2021, a how-to on ways to find what truly brings you pleasure and implement habits that will improve your day-to-day enjoyment.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about you and about what brought you to your specific career path?

When the tools I had acquired as a student of positive psychology failed me during one of my life’s most difficult stretches, I found myself questioning a lot of what I had learned about happiness. I began to critically evaluate modern approaches to subjective well-being. In doing so, I realized how much misinformation is out there. After years of research, I came up with an action-based approach to pursuing happiness — creating habits using evidence-based practices to invite more fun and joy in my life. I now share what I learned with others.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

I am fortunate to have a few. A story I tell in “The Fun Habit” is randomly having the opportunity to escort Elizabeth Taylor on stage while crashing the Cannes Film Festival. One of the beauties of cultivating your fun habit is that it creates a lot of opportunities to have once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Specific to my career in wellness, I was invited to bowl at the White House with a bunch of other great thought leaders in the space. At the time, I didn’t even know the White House had a bowling alley. Fans of The Big Lebowski might remember the Richard Nixon bowling photo that hanged at the Dude’s tiki bar. That was taken in the same bowling alley. Nixon had the bowling alley put in while he was in office, and it still exists today for staff and private visitors. Playing there was a lot of fun.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why do you think that resonates with you? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

I really like quotes, so it’s hard to come up with a single favorite, but one of my favorites comes from Tina Fey, “You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.” I certainly made plenty of mistakes in my youth thinking too little. Once I benefited from a certain degree of maturity and ego development, however, my few regrets have come from overthinking.

Go down the waterslide! It’s always fun.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story about why that resonated with you?

“Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience” by Dr. Fred B. Bryant and Dr. Joseph Veroff has had a profound impact on the way I experience time, activities, friendships, you name it. Their wisdom, coupled with wisdom gleaned from Dr. Frode Stenseng’s research on escapism, has shifted the way I view leisure Escapes are great, and it’s a shame they’ve been villainized in our culture. Our de-emphasis on leisure here in the United States is undoubtedly one reason we have some of the worst burnout rates in the developed world. Savoring is a great manual on how to find gratitude in any given moment.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I’m putting the final touches on the manuscript for “The Fun Habit.” Fun is a vital part of our lives, and making time for it is more important than ever with so many of us facing chronic stress, burnout, loneliness, and more. However, we are continuously being told what fun is and how we should enjoy it, rather than connecting with what actually lights us up. Our hunger to aim for goalposts that aren’t of our own making leads many of us to be unhappier. The purpose of “The Fun Habit” is to teach people how to find the fun that works for them and make sure it’s a regular part of their life.

None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I had the good fortune of being mentored by Dr. Michael Gervais in the early part of his career. Dr. Gervais has now gone on to co-found Compete to Create with Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and also has a popular podcast, Finding Mastery. Given his success, he could have stopped taking my calls long ago, but he has made an effort to support my growth when I needed it most. For instance, it was important for me that he was an advisor during my doctoral work, and even though he had competing priorities, he made the time. The moral of this story is when you are early in your career, it is so important to develop your early relationships. You will likely move up the ranks with a good percentage of people from this cohort. Although our relationships tend to happen for a season or a reason, I have found that relationships developed at the beginning of any path seem to last if you respect reciprocity. It’s presumptuous on my part to guess why Mike has been so kind, but I think part of it is I did my best to help him in his journey as well — an invitation serendipitously available to me because I met him at the beginning of his career and made sure early on he understood how grateful I am for the impact he’s had on my life.

Ok, thank you for all that. Now that we are on the topic of gratitude, let’s move to the main focus of our interview. As you know, the collective mental health of our country is facing extreme pressure. We would like to explore together how every one of us can use gratitude to improve our mental wellness. Let’s start with a basic definition of terms. How do you define the concept of Gratitude? Can you explain what you mean?

Gratitude is an opportunity to acknowledge, appreciate, and give dignity to something outside ourselves. It is an opportunity to celebrate our connections to the people, places, things, and events that lift us up, help us, bring us joy and pleasure, and gift us with awe, wonder, and wisdom.

Why do you think so many people do not feel gratitude? How would you articulate why a simple emotion can be so elusive?

I believe there are a couple of reasons. One, some of us at an early age had the context of gratitude undesirably skewed. When a parent or authority figure barks, “show a little gratitude,” or, “I wish you were more grateful for X,” this negative reinforcement subtly teaches us that gratitude is a form of currency. There is a realignment or reframing needed to undo this damage. For some of us, that doesn’t come easy.

Two, self-improvement has placed an overemphasis on “me” versus “we” for too long, especially in Western cultures. I’m as susceptible to hustle porn as the next person. Messages like, “You can’t pour from an empty cup” seem reasonable at first blush but move our focus towards vanity. Taking pride in yourself isn’t necessarily bad, but when we get intoxicated with self-dignity, it can crowd out energy for gratitude. We think it is all about us when, in reality, our well-being is heavily reliant on the connections we have with others and the outside world.

This might be intuitive to you, but I think it will be constructive to help spell it out. Can you share with us a few ways that increased gratitude can benefit and enhance our life?

Life — our own, as well as life in general — exists as a myriad of events. There is an abundance of good and bad out there. Denying this truth is not helpful. Those that engage in this type of internal deceit feel anxiety because of the cognitive dissonance it creates. Bad stuff happens, but so does good stuff. How we experience life is due in part to the available information we put to use to predict what will happen next. Gratitude refines our filters to give more weight to seeing the good without being a Pollyanna (which can be harmful). In this way, gratitude also supports a growth mindset. When you are encouraged by what you see around you, it supports optimism and curiosity. You have more energy to move forward and to explore your options. Gratitude towards others is prosocial, so it also supports your relationships which mitigates loneliness.

Let’s talk about mental wellness in particular. Can you share with us a few examples of how gratitude can help improve mental wellness?

When we engage in authentic gratitude, it lets us bathe in positive emotion. As Dr. Barbara Fredrickson puts it, it “broadens and builds” an optimistic worldview. These types of mental exercises are what help build resilience — resilience that provides us protection against the pain that comes from inevitable misfortune. There is a great book by Dr. Robert Emmons and Dr. Michael McCullough called “The Psychology of Gratitude” that outlines a laundry list of benefits regarding gratitude backed by empirical research. In addition to broadening our emotions and providing us with resilience, gratitude enhances our happiness because our disposition changes for the better.

Ok wonderful. Now here is the main question of our discussion. From your experience or research, what are “Five Ways That Each Of Us Can Leverage The Power Of Gratitude To Improve Our Overall Mental Wellness”. Can you please share a story or example for each?

1) Take a moment to marvel. I take a minute each night to marvel with gratitude about how wondrous life can be. Sometimes that means reflecting on something amazing my children did that day. Sometimes it’s sitting with a piece of wisdom I learned from a mentor. Sometimes it’s contemplating infinity. There is always something to marvel in.

2) Be appreciative of simple pleasures. On the flip side, there are so many little things that bring us daily joy that we often look past because we are moving so fast these days. My wife just gifted me some dark chocolate for Valentine’s Day. When I have a piece, I don’t just quickly chomp it down, even though my mind wants me to move on to the next thing. I take time to savor the taste of this simple experience. I acknowledge the gift that we can find so much pleasure in partaking in such little acts.

3) Pay it forward. It’s fun to engage in grateful acts of random kindness. A simple gesture, but nonetheless, I love buying coffee for the person behind me, especially as an act of gratitude when someone has done something kind for me. It uplifts the individual who receives the gift and makes me feel good, too. A twist I learned from Dr. Timothy Wilson is to randomize the surprise. Our minds have evolved to be sense-making machines — we need to come up with explanations. This works OK for negative events — we process them and assimilate the knowledge into what will help protect us and ensure our survival. The problem is because this has been so helpful from an evolutionary context, we overestimate the impact of negative events. When we are able to make sense of something — good or bad — we also tend to process the information quickly and move on. The catch is when we cannot process something, when we are left to wonder about the experience, our emotions linger. When the experience is good (e.g., a fun surprise), this can extend the experience’s pleasurable aspects. Next time you pay something forward, don’t let the receiver understand the good fortune’s context. You’ll extend their pleasure and can take satisfaction knowing you didn’t need to indulge in praise just to do a good deed. You did it simply as an act of gratitude.

4) Build a treasure chest. It’s no secret I value fun. My favorite form of gratitude which I discuss extensively in “The Fun Habit” is relishing. I keep a chest of treasured fun memories to look back on and relish with appreciation. I fill the chest with postcards, mementos, notes, pictures, etc. Whenever I’m really feeling off, I go back to the chest and pick up an artifact and immediately feel a sense of gratitude. My receptacle of choice is a chest, but you can pick anything: a shoebox, a jar, whatever you’d like, and fill it with memories and notes about whatever fills you up. I prefer this method to journaling because we now know from research coming from Sonja Lyubomirsky and others that when gratitude is prescribed as a ritual it can often be harmful. When you are empowered with agency about when and where you deposit and retrieve things to be grateful for, it increases gratitude’s impact.

5) Share the love. Reach out to someone you haven’t connected with in a while and let them know how they’ve made an impact on your life. Whenever I’m feeling low, letting someone else know how they’ve positively touched my life almost always pulls me right back up. The benefits of sharing gratitude this way have been well-studied by Dr. Martin Seligman and others. When we let others know we are grateful for the impact they’ve had on our life, both parties benefit.

Is there a particular practice that can be used during a time when one is feeling really down, really vulnerable, or really sensitive?

As I just mentioned, the prosocial benefits of connecting with someone you care about are one of the best balms I know when I am feeling down or stuck. Sharing authentic gratitude with someone who has supported your journey reminds all involved that there is something out there bigger than ourselves. The connection to a loved one or a friend, as well as the acknowledgment that we all need each other to thrive, are enough to remind us that our problems are usually not as large as we originally made them out to be.

Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that you would recommend to our readers to help them to live with gratitude?

I’ve mentioned a few already. “Savoring” is a great book for anyone that would like a deep dive into the practice, as well as “The Psychology of Gratitude” by Emmons and McCullough. Michael’s Finding Mastery podcast often explores gratitude. His interview with Henry Fraser is a great one in that regard. I highly recommend it. I often recommend apps like Timehop that provide the user with alerts to view old memories, and these queues can be used as prompts to be grateful and relish fond memories too.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

My sincere hope is that the launch of “The Fun Habit” does start a movement. We all have an innate power to invite more enjoyment in our lives with simple shifts and nudges. Sometimes all we need is to be pointed to effective tools. Fun, just like gratitude, can be contagious, so if we get enough people on board, we will heal a lot of the ills and wounds that the last few years have made pervasive.

What is the best way our readers can further follow your work online?

Grateful for the opportunity to share. Anyone interested in fun, I invite you to please sign up for my mailing list at https://michaelrucker.com and be on the lookout for “The Fun Habit” coming out later this year.

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!