In his article "Why Gratitude Is Good," Dr. Robert Emmons, the world's leading scientific expert on gratitude, noted "You can't be envious and grateful at the same time. They're incompatible feelings, because if you're grateful, you can't resent someone for owning things you don't." People with high levels of gratitude have low levels of resentment and envy.
Gratitude is a little like love--when it matures and goes beyond being a passive feeling or emotion, it becomes an active exercise: an act of the will. People who have regular gratitude practices are not only healthier, happier, and have better relationships, but can aid individuals and teams in persevering through challenging tasks.
According to Dr. Martin Seligman, credited as the "father" of Positive Psychology, there are five building blocks that enable human flourishing – Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. In his typology of the three kinds of happy lives (the pleasurable life; the good life; and the meaningful life), the good life and the meaningful life were related to life satisfaction. Astonishingly, however, the amount of pleasure in life did not add to life satisfaction.
But you don't necessarily have to be a leading PhD and spend decades studying what many of us know by natural observation: grateful people are happy people, because they recognize everything that they have is more or less a gift. This is why the Apostle Paul said that he had "learned to be content whatever the circumstance."
For many people, "being content" is an elusive dream that seems to be always just beyond our grasp. It does not come naturally in our culture, because we are worked on constantly by advertisers ("buy this"), media ("watch this"), pharmaceutical companies ("take this"), to drive home the fact that we are incomplete without x, y, and z. A consumer society flourishes and is fueled by want. Want is fueled by envy. And envy is the antithesis of contentment.
It's funny--when googling "happiness and gratitude," there was no shortage of supporting articles and documents; the two go together like peanut butter and jelly. But when it came to searching "happiness and success," it was an inverse return-- many "success does not equal happiness" articles and studies, but not as much on whether or not happiness leads to success.
Perhaps this is because "success" is largely an objective canon, or standard of measure, in work culture. It can be quantifiably measured in outcomes, sales, subscribers, likes, returns, promotions, wins, ROI, net worth, etc. Whereas gratitude may be the key that unlocks the door to happiness in a person, "success" as we have traditionally understood it is not always so easily (and subjectively) defined apart from that which exists outside the self.
Grateful people are largely happy people. But the same cannot necessarily be said for successful people. In fact, sometimes the inverse is true: the chasing after metrics can often compensate for an inner-deficiency that says one "isn't good enough" as-is. That's not to say it's not effective as a motivator. People with something to prove--either to themselves, or to, for instance, a parent who never told them they were good enough--are often the hardest working and most driven individuals who rise to the top of organizations. It's a laudable, achievement-focused mindset fueled by competition that certainly brings with it certain rewards and accolades. And yet the one thing that most everyone wants but no one knows how to achieve--namely, lasting happiness--remains elusive.
It makes me think of a parable I once heard that went something like this:
"One day a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach, with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish.
About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach, trying to relieve some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family. “You aren’t going to catch many fish that way,” said the businessman to the fisherman.
“You should be working rather than lying on the beach!”
The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, “And what will my reward be?”
“Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!” was the businessman’s answer. “And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman, still smiling. The businessman replied, “You will make money and you’ll be able to buy a boat, which will then result in larger catches of fish!”
“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman again.
The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman’s questions. “You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work for you!” he said.
“And then what will my reward be?” repeated the fisherman.
The businessman was getting angry. “Don’t you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish for you!”
Once again the fisherman asked, “And then what will my reward be?”
The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman, “Don’t you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won’t have a care in the world!”
The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, “And what do you think I’m doing right now?”
Depending on your vantage point and value system, you might see different morals in the tale. Is the fisherman lazy? Unmotivated? Content with mediocrity? Or has he found a secret that somehow eludes others?
What about the businessman--is he a capitalist fat-cat caught in a hamster wheel of materialism? Or is he smart, focused, enterprising, and--dare we say--successful? That is, the kind of person a company would be clamoring to hire.
Grateful people may be happy people, but that happiness is of primary value to the individual who possesses it, and those in his or her immediate sphere. It may or may not be of value to one's employer, industry, or the corporate world at large, and only then to the degree in which it translates into greater productivity, less burn-out, higher yields, more creativity, etc.
Successful people may be happy people to the degree that they flourish in that which they are successful in; that is they gain positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment from their work. But then we might ask, "what happens when one is no longer working for Company X?" What happens in a recession when they are laid off, or they have so lost their identity in their work or corporate culture that they no longer know who they are without their accomplishments and objective "success?" It's a precarious and tenuous place to find oneself in when the rug is suddenly pulled out from under you.
Finally, to come full circle, happy people may be successful to the extent that they can own and define what success actually means, even when it might not square with external, traditional standards. The high school janitor, the supermarket cashier, the insurance salesman, who volunteers in their community, mentors younger people, lives in an ethical manner, raises a family, leaves a legacy for their grandchildren--is this what we would call success?
A person who has learned to be "content in all circumstances" is, in many ways, a free person. Because he trains himself to see all things--even hardship and adversity--as an unmerited gift, gratitude (and by extension, happiness) becomes the byproduct. He has become rich in spirit, the currency of immateriality. He has found the key that the vast majority of people spend their whole lives searching for. He has learned the secret to success, though maybe not as the world might define it. Because he has the freedom to define it for himself.
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