Truth that took me a long time to learn: Learning to express whole-hearted gratitude is one of the most important keys to success and happiness in life.
Five years ago on the eve of Thanksgiving, I asked readers of this newsletter share what they were thankful for.
Their replies were inspiring, and they got me thinking on a deep, philosophical level about gratitude, and how to practice it.
And, I came up with the list of seven “gratitude prompts” you’ll find below. Here’s how it begins.
1. Are you grateful that you’re alive?
Start with this one: You’re alive! Right now! How cool is that?
Can you imagine all of the highly unlikely things that had to happen in order for you to even have been born?
So, be grateful that your parents met. Be grateful that their parents met. Be grateful for whatever strange, against-all-odds things had to happen.
Imagine, not only did we get to be born, but we were born in the 20th or 21st centuries!
We speak the world’s most common language, and we’re walking around with small devices in our pockets that can connect us to almost the entire history of human knowledge.
I mean, the timing is pretty great.
Even though there are more than seven billion people alive on the planet, that doesn’t make this gift of life less unique. The gift of life is worth being very thankful for.
2. Are you grateful for pain and longing?
Wait, what? What kind of list is this?
Absolutely, yes. Learn to be grateful for the pain and longing in your life. Do it for two main reasons.
First, because good relationships are what make us happiest and most fulfilled, and all good relationships depend on understanding. If you’d never experienced pain and longing, you’d never be able to understand anyone else.
Pain and longing lead to growth.
Also, how would you know the absence of pain and longing if you didn’t know what it was like to feel them to begin with?
3. Are you grateful for your needs?
First, be grateful for your needs that are being met.
Do you have a home? Food? Shelter? Protection from the elements?
Congratulations. The base level of Maslow’s hierarchy is taken care of. That’s fairly easy to be grateful for, even if we sometimes forget.
The trickier part? Being grateful for unmet needs — frankly, the kinds of things that lead to pain and longing sometimes (see above).
These are the fires that get lit under us. They’re what motivate us to exercise creativity.
They’re what get us out of bed in the morning on the days when we’d really rather sleep in.
No needs? No necessities? Then no inventions. (Necessity is their mother.)
Be grateful for progress, and in turn, be grateful for the needs that make them possible.
4. Are you grateful for forgiveness?
We all mess up. We all have to ask for forgiveness sometimes. We all have reason to be thankful when it’s given.
Here’s a twist though: How about exploring gratitude for your own ability to forgive?
Because you’re human; you’ve been hurt by other people. You’ve probably even been hurt by people you care about. Maybe deeply.
I’ve written before that I think people who look for business partners should look first to people they’ve done other projects with before. The reason is that you don’t want the first argument you have to be over something important, like the direction of your company.
But you will have arguments. Some of them might get heated.
The ability to forgive and move on keeps you from throwing out these kinds of good, valuable relationships. They wouldn’t be tenable otherwise.
That makes your ability to forgive a gift, and something else to be grateful for.
5. Are you grateful for your failures?
This is a good one, right? Failures. I’ve sure had my share of them.
Done right, however, failures are a sign of ambition. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.
They’re also learning opportunities–not just a chance to learn from your mistakes, or the times you fall short–but a chance to learn how to fail.
You learn what to be afraid of and what not to be afraid of. You learn sometimes that there’s nothing really to be afraid of–that we all get second acts in America.
And third ones, and fourth ones, as long as we keep going.
Fall short, sure, but realize it almost never has to be the end of the story.
Be grateful for your ability to write that next chapter, but also for the experiences–even the failures–that brought you to the blank page once more.
6. Are you grateful for your people?
Our lives are largely the sum total of our relationships. So train yourself to be grateful for the people in your life.
People like your family, your friends, your co-workers.
And your classmates. Your acquaintances.
It’s hard sometimes, but I’d go so far as to say: Learn to be grateful for your rivals — even your enemies, if you have such people — the ones who hurt you or bring out the worst in you.
You get knowledge from even those relationships. You get understanding. You get things worth being grateful for.
And while we’re at it, I’d put the animals in your life in this category too: pets if you have them. Those relationships are important. And they’re worthy of gratitude too.
7. Are you grateful for hope and faith?
Was this year a difficult one? I’m sorry to hear it, and I hope experiencing that difficulty brings you hope.
How? Because, by definition, if this year was especially difficult, then other years must be better.
That’s not to minimize the very big challenges and pain that some people have faced in the last 12 months. It’s just to recognize that hope is many things, but it’s partly the sense that bad times prove the existence of better times.
Locked up with it: faith.
I’m not going to evangelize here; I’ve been wrong about the details on enough things in my life that I have a hard time telling anyone else, “This is what you should believe.”
But hope and faith go hand in hand. They’re prerequisites to optimism. And optimistic people are the ones who achieve the greatest success and happiness in life.
So learn to be grateful for both of them. And feel a bit better about next year.
Gratitude as a habit
I think you’ll come up with other, even better examples of “gratitude prompts” to add to this list. I hope you’ll share them.
Again, it was hearing what readers had to say about gratitude back in 2020 (of all years!) that got me thinking deeply about it to begin with.
Are you up for it again? I’d love to hear things you’re grateful for in the comments. And let me start it off by saying thank you very much for being here and reading Understandably. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
7 other things
Don’t plan to cook on Thanksgiving? Here are the restaurants and fast food places that are scheduled to be open. (Yahoo News)
Move aside Tokyo, the world has a new largest city: With an estimated population of nearly 42 million residents, Indonesia’s capital Jakarta soared from 33rd place to surpass Japan’s Tokyo, according to a new United Nations report. (NBC News)
H. Rap Brown, one of the most vocal leaders of the Black Power movement, has died in a prison hospital while serving a life sentence for the killing of a Georgia sheriff’s deputy. He was 82. Brown maintained his innocence but was convicted in 2002. (AP)
Campbell’s is insisting that its soups aren’t made with lab-grown chicken, or bioengineered meat. The food giant issued the explanation on its website after leaked audio allegedly captured Campbell’s vice president of information technology saying the company’s meat “came from a 3D printer.” (The Verge)
They relied on marijuana to get through the day. But then days felt impossible without it. (AP)
This Thanksgiving, your turkey might thank you for nothing: a wave of AI‑slop recipes has swooped in, offering bogus cooking advice, bizarre measurements, and photos that may look right but taste wrong. Real food bloggers are seeing their clicks vanish while algorithms churn out disastrously unappetizing dinner ideas. (Boing Boing)
Son dresses as dead mother in ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ ruse to claim her pension: An Italian pensioner had been deceased for three years when family member was caught impersonating her while trying to renew her ID card. (The Telegraph)
Thanks for reading. Photo by Amadeo Valar on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments!
I agree with Theresa. I'm grateful for you Bill and Understandably. I'm not always able to read your newsletter but when I do, you never fail to disappoint. I'm grateful that your insights get me thinking about things I rarely if ever think about. Jimmy Valvano advised that every day we should spend some time in thought, and laugh and cry. You help us with that mission so thank you!
Are you Grateful for Nature? Reflecting on the infinite beauty of nature calms the nervous system and floods our mind and soul with gratitude. It is always changing as is life. We can flow like a river and experience a ripple effect of the impact our lives have had on others and vice versa.
Grateful for these prompts and the opportunity to comment.