Sustainable Wellbeing
Want to Improve Your Wellbeing in 2022? Skip The Gratitude Journal.
Cultivating gratitude isn’t as easy as 1–2–3
If you are looking to focus on self-growth and wellbeing in 2022 and find yourself being drawn to a Gratitude Journal, do yourself a favour this year and try something else.
I get it, every single coach, influencer, and wellbeing guru out there is telling you that no matter what your goal for this year is, gratitude will help you get there. Gratitude is being marketed as a way to be ‘better’ in every single way.
Better Relationships? Gratitude.
Better Physical Health? Gratitude.
Better Mental Health? Gratitude.
More Empathy and Less Anger? Gratitude and you guessed it…gratitude.
Better Sleep, Self-Esteem, Resilience? Gratitude, Gratitude, Gratitude.
With all that promise you would be crazy to try anything else.
Even better, the self declared gurus proclaim, all you have to do to unlock these benefits?
Write down a list of 3 things that you are grateful for every day. That’s IT!
Sound too good to be true?
It’s because it is. Ask yourself this — when was the last time that writing a list changed anything?
Does writing a grocery list make you eat healthier?
No.
Does listing your favourite workouts strengthen your body?
No.
Then why would listing 3 things that you are grateful for make you more grateful?
“WAIT!”
(I can already hear them shouting from their precarious platforms.)
“Writing 3 things I’m grateful for changed my life and, (this is when they get really smug), you don’t have to believe me, after all… ‘science’ says it works”.
But — is that what “Science” says?
The answer is: Yes, but also… No.
While it’s true that gratitude has shown to have a unique and powerful relationship with mental/physical health and wellbeing – scientifically speaking that relationship is best defined as ‘it’s complicated.’
Here’s what ‘Science’ actually says*:
1) The Correlation Between Gratitude and Wellbeing is Moderate to Strong.
There appears to be a strong relationship between gratitude and increased wellbeing, but corelation does not indicate causation. And there are a lot of things about the relationship that need deeper investigation.
The strength of the correlation changes based on:
- how you measure wellbeing
- how you measure gratitude
- what country you live in
- how old you are
- if you have a clinical diagnosis or not
Interestingly if you look to the science, the claims of the magic of gratitude become a lot less… well… magical. The ‘science’ agrees that before we all go out and invest all our wellbeing into pens and stacks of pretty journals — more investigation is needed.
Because,
2) Gratitude Interventions Work — But Other Things Do Too
Gratitude Interventions like the ‘3 blessings’ do have a positive impact on individual wellbeing but that impact is not substantially different from similar interventions assigned in the studies. In fact interventions like the Best Possible Self actually out-perform gratitude in certain measures.
Gratitude interventions perform best when compared to ‘waitlist’ conditions. That is gratitude interventions are better than doing nothing. Those same studies show gratitude interventions work AS WELL AS more traditional psychological interventions.
The biggest apparent difference?
People seem to like gratitude interventions more — they find them enjoyable, easy to do and self motivating to complete. So they tend to stick with them longer, put more effort into them, and therefore reap greater benefits.
However,
3) Interventions work best when they have an endpoint.
None of the studies that I read talked about maintaining the intervention forever. In fact no intervention is meant to be maintained forever. The goal of intervention is to bring awareness and motivate positive change.
The challenge is that sustainable change takes time — longer than the studied effects of interventions like the ‘3 blessings’ exercise. What we do know is that things we find enjoyable can easily fall victim to the ‘hedonic treadmill’ — the initial highs that we got from the activity eventually begin to wear off.
Because,
4) Variety, Novelty, Social Support and Personal Fit is Essential
‘Science’ also says that to be effective any intervention needs to maintain its novelty, variety, and most importantly it’s ‘fit’ with the human doing the intervention, including being able to share it with those closest to them.
The problem with gratitude journals that focus on list after list after list is that they become boring, repetitive, and honestly just an annoying task to complete before bed.
Gratitude expert and creator of the 3 blessings intervention, Robert Emmons himself, finds the practice of maintaining a gratitude journal challenging, describing the feeling of completion more as relief than gratitude.
If the person who created the intervention finds it ineffective in cultivating more gratitude — then why are coaches, influencers, and gurus still pushing it as the ultimate solution? (Spoiler alert — $$)
More importantly how can someone who genuinely wants to focus on self growth find something that actually leads to sustainable well-being?
Maybe we need to take a step back, channel our inner Adam Grant and Rethink what we ‘know’ about gratitude and how we cultivate more of it within our lives.
Maybe we need to let go of what we think we know, open ourselves to possibility, take accountability for our thoughts and actions, and find our own unique pathway to gratitude and well-being.
It’s 2022 and this year I am trading in my gratitude journals full of lists and going on a gratitude adventure.
Who’s coming with me?
* Science Says…
Carrillo, A., Rubio-Aparicio, M., Molinari, G., Enrique, Á., Sánchez-Meca, J., & Baños, R. M. (2019). Effects of the Best Possible Self intervention: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PloS one, 14(9), e0222386.
Cregg, D.R., Cheavens, J.S. Gratitude Interventions: Effective Self-help? A Meta-analysis of the Impact on Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety. J Happiness Stud 22, 413–445 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00236-6
Davis, D. E., Choe, E., Meyers, J., Wade, N., Varjas, K., Gifford, A., Quinn, A., Hook, J. N., Van Tongeren, D. R., Griffin, B. J., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2016). Thankful for the little things: A meta-analysis of gratitude interventions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(1), 20–31. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000107
Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389.
Portocarrero, F. F., Gonzalez, K., & Ekema-Agbaw, M. (2020). A meta-analytic review of the relationship between dispositional gratitude and well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 164, 110101.
Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical psychology review, 30(7), 890–905.
