How to Adopt a Mindset of Gratitude Permanently, Not Just Occasionally
Thanksgiving is more than just a day; it’s an attitude for every day.
It’s easy to remember to be thankful on Thanksgiving. Everyone is saying “Happy Thanksgiving!” and Christmas decorations are starting to going up. But what about the day after Thanksgiving? Or, a few weeks after?
Arguably the main purpose behind special occasions, whether it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas, is to draw attention to something important and solidify that in our minds through experience. In other words, special occasions are not a chore to just live through and strike off the checklist.
Whether you’re Christian or not, it’s useful to take a look at 1 Samuel 7:12. The Israelites were supernaturally delivered from their enemies, the Philistines, prompting Samuel to commemorate the place of victory with a stone that he called ‘Ebenezer.’
The intent was to provide a tangible manifestation of their victory so that the Israelites would always have something that would jog their memory. It’s easy for us to get discouraged when we’re going through a trial. The world is a complicated place — and, most of all, we’re human.
But placing a flag in the ground — whether literally or metaphorically — can ground us to a deeper and longer-run commitment so that we don’t get derailed by all the distractions in the process.
Gratitude in the Face of Rejection
One of the challenges for me is managing the peer review process for research. The feedback process is very slow and brutal. Rejection rates from the top journals are incredibly high — between 90-99% of submissions are rejected. The whole process can take a handful of years for a single paper.
But, even after receiving rejections on a paper, I return to the laundry list of things that I’m grateful for: the opportunities to learn over the years, the data that I have access to, the network that I can pitch ideas to and iterate over, and so on.
Moreover, I constantly remind myself about the massive potential to influence higher education for the betterment of society and produce new ideas that change lives and organizations in the process.
When you stack up all the things you’re grateful for, and why you’re on the journey in the first place, the distractions and discouragements fade.
They become secondary to the bigger mission at hand.
Reflection and Taking Inventory
We should have a habit of reflecting on our trajectory: Are we headed in the right direction, or do we need to calibrate our direction?
Psychologists and theologians alike view gratitude as an integral part of our development and flourishing. Put simply, when we recognize what we have, and are thankful for it, we’re more likely to be resilient under pressure and are to help and serve others rather than moping around. We’re also more likely to be alert to additional opportunities to push forward.
Take, for instance, University of Pennsylvania Professor Angela Duckworth’s work on grit or University of Chicago Professor James Heckman’s work on non-cognitive skills. These skills are incredibly predictive and causal factors behind differences in earnings and wealth among individuals in society.
Whereas some people crumble in the face of trial, others rise to the occasion.
It’s tempting to think that resilience is just about us being resolved in the face of a challenge. But genuine resilience requires hope. And hope requires trust, which requires a firm foundation of past experience and confidence in the potential ahead of us.
Gratitude is one of the ways that we can unlock that firm foundation of past experience because it means we’ve reflected and taken stock of how we’ve been delivered through adversity before.
And, at least for me, the internal conversation about serving in higher education and producing ideas is an ongoing one that gives me overwhelming hope and excitement even in the spite of challenges in the research and peer review process.
Every step along the way is something that builds my character, much like every lap around a field builds endurance for a runner. And for that, whether it’s Thanksgiving or not, I am grateful.
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