“The prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
Inherent Debbie Downers
If you’ve ever woken up and started your day with a feeling of angst in your belly, it may be due to the human tendency to hold on to worry, anxiety, and fear. Researchers from multiple disciplines agree that we have a greater propensity to view life’s experiences from a negative perspective. Based on their seminal research study published in Personality and Social Psychology Review, Drs. Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman call this the negativity bias. In short, they found that in various domains of life, we pay more attention to negative than positive stimuli. This default to pessimism translates to tendencies like ducking praise while soaking up criticism, or ruminating on negative experiences longer than savouring positive ones. Our proclivity to notice negative stimuli has been tied to the notion that there are evolutionary adaptive benefits to being able to detect risk and avoid harm. Indeed, this idea earned the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2002 when Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky put forward Prospect theory, which explained that humans have a greater aversion to loss than gains.
The Power of Gratitude
Recent work from the field of neuroscience has similarly found that while we are more likely to be operating from the defensive circuit, feeling gratitude activates different neural circuitry, referred to as prosocial networks, that can move us out of the resting brain state that draws our attention to the negative. Gratitude is an emotion or state resulting from an awareness and appreciation of that which is valuable and meaningful to oneself. Gratitude engages prosocial networks, which have greater functional connectivity in emotion and motivation areas of the brain that decrease the extent to which fear and anxiety drive our reactions. Simply put, feeling grateful literally changes our mind so that we can feel more joy. While individuals vary in how grateful they tend to be, the more often you feel grateful, the easier it becomes to break out of defensive circuits and those that are grateful more frequently benefit from enhanced psychological well-being.
In the late 1960’s, social psychologists found that gratitude can be generated by gifts that reflect genuine effort from the giver and/or when gifts are perceived to be valuable and fulfill important needs for the recipient. While we can’t control how often others give us valuable gifts (darn), recent studies in positive psychology have found that gratitude practices – like making a concerted effort to notice and appreciate the good in one’s life – activates prosocial networks. This is good news given research has found that feeling grateful improves physical health, enriches how partners tend to their relationships, and even decreases materialism while increasing overall life satisfaction. Even now, you may find this knowledge inciting a feeling of gratitude for the existence of such an efficient mental technique.
An emerging trend in mental health research that is generating attention for its potential to promote health behaviour change is just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAI). A JITAI is an intervention design that adapts the type, timing, and intensity of support to the individual needs of the situation to deliver what a person needs, at the moment they need it, and in the context they need it. For example, one research project built a system referred to as Lullaby, which explored the idea of bedroom sensors that monitor one’s sleep environment (temperature, light, sound and motion) to diagnose sleep disruptors. Yet, even without sensors or wearables, it is possible that gratitude practices can be applied as a JITAI tool to broaden our perspective and access more positive emotions.
Gratitude JITAI at Work
For leaders managing challenging employees, or employees navigating toxic workplaces, or even individuals preparing to spend extended time with family over holidays (e.g., Thanksgiving), consider adapting to difficult situations by equipping yourself with a gratitude JITAI protocol, characterized by 6 key components:
- A long-term goal or outcome
- A short-term goal or outcome
- Identification of key decision points
- Intervention options
- Tailoring variables
- Decision rules
First, identify what your short and long term goals are. Do you want the meeting to go smoothly? Do you want to improve the overall quality of the relationship? Next, preemptively anticipate what triggers will signal to you that an intervention is required. What thoughts, emotions, or behaviours will cue you to notice that your defensive circuits are engaged? Do you need to practice gratitude? Do you need to take a moment to breathe? Do you need a break to create more space and time? Tailoring your variables might include deciding which individuals or situations are meaningful enough to devote this level of intentional self-regulation towards. Decision rules may refer to time constraints around a particular situation that determine how much time you have for an intervention, if at all.
The ability to be conscious of what is happening as it happens is referred to as meta-awareness. Smart watches and wearables help remind us of what we’re experiencing moment-to-moment because meta-awareness is not always accessible, especially in stressful circumstances when we are in a state of hyper vigilance or shutdown. But, sensory tools or not, by taking the time to anticipate difficult situations beforehand and reflect on how we want to show up, a technique psychologists call implementation intentions, individuals can be more adept at regulating their emotions. The simple act of catching yourself in a spiral of negative thoughts, like “will anyone read this post” or “who am I to write for Forbes.com”, may be the signal that reminds you to connect to gratitude to change your perspective, because you hold the keys to free yourself from your own mental prison. Thank you for reading this post.