Tim Houlihan  0:07  
Thanksgiving is meant to be so much about gratitude. But here's my question, when was the last time you actually told someone how much they meant to you, how grateful you were about them?

Kurt Nelson  0:20  
We think it, we feel it, but we don't always say it. And why is that so hard? That's what we're going to talk about in this special edition of a grooving session with behavioral grooves. I'm Kurt Nelson

Tim Houlihan  0:36  
and I'm Tim Houlihan, and we are going to get into gratitude first, with a little bit of science behind gratitude. Why does gratitude improve our well being? Kurt, why does it matter

Kurt Nelson  0:46  
so well, there's lots of research that it improves our well being, it increases happiness, the optimism we have, the relationship satisfaction, lower stress and even improve sleep, right? There's a number of great research out there, people who keep gratitude journals were 25% happier after 10 weeks by, you know, some some accounts. So it's out there, and I think it's just really important. I think one of the ways that I describe this, and I've said this before on the show, as well as anybody that's talked to me about gratitude is gratitude rewires our brain. And when we are looking for gratitude, if we have a gratitude journal or trying to keep looking for things to be grateful for, our brain gets rewired to look for those things. And when we look for those things, we see them, and all of a sudden the world seems like a much better place to us. But I think it's really interesting, as we talked about at the very beginning, is why is it hard for us to express gratitude to others? Yeah, well,

Tim Houlihan  1:53  
because we think it's going to be awkward, right? We automatically. And Nick eppley's work on this has has underscored this is a lot, because people underestimate how much others are actually going to appreciate being thanked. We think it's going to be awkward, but actually, when we actually do it, it can be deeply meaningful.

Kurt Nelson  2:12  
Exactly, yeah. And there's also this familiarity bias, right? We take those closest to us for granted, and gratitude feels less necessary. I don't have to say thank you to you for going and doing it at what you do. Yet sometimes that that impact is greatest, right? Is when you're expressing gratitude to those people who are closest to you for things that they're doing on a regular, everyday basis. I often use what I call the this wonderful life kind of way of thinking about this, this idea of, all right, if that person wasn't in your life, how much worse would your life be? And we don't often, it's that counterfactual. It's the negative of this. And we don't think like that way very much. And I think that's a really key thing to do.

Tim Houlihan  3:05  
I'm going to go back to Nick hepley on this one. There is another miscalibration problem where we mistakenly believe that other people can actually read our feelings, that when we feel that sense of gratitude, we don't have to say it out loud, because, oh my gosh, of course, can't they just tell that? I'm so damn happy with them right now, and they're the most important thing in my life, don't they just, I'm radiating that Kurt, aren't you getting that? Maybe not, no,

Kurt Nelson  3:30  
but I'm not. I think that, but it's really important when you talk about that, because so often we assume, well, they should just know, I mean, I I radiate that out every day, and yet that's not the case, right? So I

Tim Houlihan  3:44  
said, thank you. I said, Thank you. After after Thanksgiving dinner. I said, Thank you. Didn't they get that? Well, maybe, maybe I could be a little bit more gushing, or just a little bit more specific. The turkey wasn't dry this year.

Kurt Nelson  4:01  
That might be enough for the turkey nothing. And I think the you know, there's another aspect of this is just the speed of modern life, is we don't slow down enough, and we don't slow down to pay attention to understand what and look for those things that we should be grateful for, and we don't slow down enough to reflect on the things that we're really grateful for, and we don't slow down enough to say thank you, right? Because we have to rush to the next thing, because we have the next tweet, we have to look at the next whatever it is that we're doing, it's just life goes really, really, really fast, and, man, we gotta slow

Tim Houlihan  4:46  
down. You can't be grateful when you're rushing to the next thing that that's the short story Kurt give us. Give us a couple of practical nudges that we can take away from from this about gratitude. Yeah.

Kurt Nelson  4:57  
So I already talked about, like, thinking about. About gratitude from the wonderful life, the George Bailey kind of thing you're not in my life. So do that. Another thing, write it down, even briefly. Just take note and do maybe it's a voice memo, maybe it's something on your phone, but when you write it down a it strengthens the way that you can remember it. So at Thanksgiving, when you're going around and saying what you're grateful for, you can actually remember these moments that are going to be there. Or you can send a little thank you note to somebody. Handwritten note is fantastic, right? It's this idea of doing that, even if it's not handwritten, a little email, a little text that just is out of the blue here, this is something thankful. Write it down. Helps you remember. Also, you can send it that way. That reduces a little bit of the awkwardness too. Sometimes, like if you don't have to say it face to face, right? Absolutely. Gratitude is better when it's specific as opposed to generic. Yes. So concrete words, right? Thanks for always having my back when we're you know, in this argument of family situation, you always pick my side, and that means an awful lot to me, right? Okay, yep, that's good. You know, you have those, you have those, you know, allies that you can count on, or different pieces, but the more that you can be specific, it's like recognition. We talk about this all the time in recognition, it's like, oh, you know, thank you for doing a great job doesn't have the same impact as thank you for doing X, Y and Z over this. And here's what that meant. And that's the same thing with gratitude, right? Yeah, okay, what else? And I talked about like, you can write it down and send it, but it gratitude really is powerful when you say it in person, right? Verbal. Thanks. There's a mirror neurons, right? And so like, when you are being grateful for something that you're expressing, the gratitude that you feel that actually activates those, those mirror neurons in other people, and so they get that sense of gratitude themselves, right? So, yeah, yeah,

Tim Houlihan  7:21  
you could, you could use the, I'm just riffing here, but you could use the Thanksgiving table to have, like, a one toast thing, where everyone toast about something that they're thankful for about another person at the table,

Kurt Nelson  7:33  
right? We talked about this in our gatherings and rituals, one where change that like, what are you grateful for to what are you grateful for about another person at this table? At the table, that's that little switch a now that gratitude becomes personal, it becomes something that we say out loud in that moment, and it and hopefully we can, we can grab that up. So Okay, all right. Closing thoughts, Mr. Houlihan,

Tim Houlihan  8:00  
gratitude connects us, man. It is anthropological. It is deep, it is important. It is something that we're gonna do, but only if we

Speaker 1  8:12  
express it. It's not, it's because,

Kurt Nelson  8:16  
because we're not mind readers, and we're not, we're not that great at reading the gratitude emotion that is seeping out of us with the others around us, those most familiar with us, often, right? Yeah,

Tim Houlihan  8:27  
say, say that you're grateful. Write down that you're grateful, share that you're grateful, just express it. That's the that's the whole thing here.

Kurt Nelson  8:35  
Yeah, so with that, you know, I'm gonna leave again grooves with a group question like, who is one person that you can identify that has made a difference in your life, that you're grateful for, for something they've done, big, small, little doesn't matter? Okay? And go out this week, or maybe wait until Thanksgiving. I don't know when this air is going to get aired, but maybe at Thanksgiving, and make sure that you tell them that you are grateful for what they've done. So it's more of a groove, not question. It's a groove action that that people should take. So yeah, all right, and with that, we hope that you've taken something from this episode and use it to go out and find your groove and be grateful for that this week you you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai