Inspiration arrived from two sources as I was thinking about how to begin today’s tip.
The first source was a note that I had saved while studying for a nutrition certification. It read:
By the way, don’t mistake “foundational” for “too easy” or “I already know that.”
The basics aren’t always easy or obvious. For instance, guess how many Americans meet the following five criteria of a basic healthy lifestyle:
- Don’t smoke.
- Drink moderate to no alcohol.
- Get regular physical activity.
- Maintain a healthy body weight.
- Get enough sleep every day.
Only about 6%. Never mind all the other stuff like eating enough protein, having a healthy mindset, building supportive relationships, and so forth.
The second was a Muhammad Ali quote I recently read:
The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
So with those two ideas in mind, here’s some additional info and my updated practice surrounding a topic I’ve covered only once in the past 97 Trainer Tips—not-so-incidentally, exactly one year ago.
Gratitude (and Mental Subtraction)
In last year’s tip I discussed having begun a (quick) daily gratitude journaling practice. I mentioned that it had helped me to become more aware of the positive experiences that occurred during the day and to more intentionally choose my attitude and responses to other challenges.
Those mental improvements made it easier to make slight improvements in other seemingly unrelated areas like nutrition, exercise, and sleep. And all of those improvements made it easier to respond to subsequent challenges.
I obviously found it to be a helpful practice and recommend that you give it a try too. Check out the Putting It Into Practice section or the book recommendations from last year’s tip for more detail.
Of course, as mentioned at the beginning of last year’s tip, I also knew my tendency to not continue journaling practices. But since research has shown gratitude to be one of the top five virtues that positively affects human happiness (i.e. a seemingly “foundational” practice), I wanted to continue some type of intentional practice.
So I experimented with other ideas. What I’ve found seems to work best for me is a twofold practice:
The first is a nightly “mental gratitude review” that has taken the place of actual journaling. (It’s basically what I described in last year’s tip but without the writing. 🙂)
The second is a practice called “mental subtraction”. Whenever I catch myself feeling annoyed by something, I spend a few seconds imagining what my life would be like without it.
As a brief example:
Last week while doing some office work, my network connection was running a bit slowly. When I realized I was complaining in my head about how “sh*t just doesn’t work when I need it to”, I considered how amazing it was to be working on a computer connected via “airwaves” to the Internet in the first place.
Then I thought about the fact that my office was warm, my chair was comfortable, and my (physical) desktop was spacious and clutter-free.
Finally, I imagined what life would be like if I wasn’t lucky enough to have any of those things. Which, of course, helped me realize that a slow network connection was still a network connection—and that maybe it was time to stand up and move for a few minutes anyway.
When I got back to work a couple minutes later, I had a much better attitude. I’m sure it was due to both the gratitude and the exercise.
Putting it into practice
As I said last year, Thanksgiving is a perfect time to start a gratitude practice since you’re likely to be in the spirit of it already.
So this year when you think or talk about the people, experiences, and stuff you’re thankful to have in your life, maybe spend a few extra seconds imagining in detail what life would be like without all of it/them in it.
If you’re anything like me, you might be surprised at the flood of gratitude that fills you up and improves the rest of your life when you do that consistently.