Try the thank-you therapy and be happy

Research shows that cultivating an attitude of gratitude greatly benefits our general health and contributes to our personal happiness.

Prof. Robert Emmons of the University of California, Davis is a ‘gratitude expert’ and has been doing research on the psychology of gratitude for 10 years now.

In a Nov. 2007 online interview with Alvaro Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of SharpBrains (see the Q&A here), Emmons says that gratitude is a “positive emotion” which he and his team are studying “not merely as an academic discipline, but as a practical framework to better functioning in life by taking control of happiness levels and practicing the skill of emotional self-regulation.”

Emmons claims that the practice of gratitude can increase a person’s happiness level by around 25 percent and can bring positive health effects, such as a better sleeping time. He points out that people who keep what he calls a “Gratitude Journal,” where one jots down things he/she feels grateful for, often experience a “meaningful difference” in their level of happiness, even for as little as three weeks of gratitude journaling.

Of course, this positive psychology concept is not entirely new to us. We’ve heard more than once in church sermons or read in self-help books about the benefits of “counting our blessings” and “giving thanks in everything.”

We just couldn’t measure scientifically the results of being in a constant state of thankfulness the way Emmons was able to measure “objective data” in his study of the psychology of gratitude. We just noticed that people, who had a mental gratitude list, looked happier…and healthier. And they exuded that positive aura that made us want to be around them.

It seems, though, that being thankful has become an obsolete practice. A number of people, especially those who live in First World countries, have sadly become a generation of whiners, who take many things for granted.

However, it’s not yet too late to breed an attitude of thankfulness in your lives. By choosing to put into practice the basic principles of the thank-you therapy, you get to raise your happiness level dramatically, enjoy a healthier lifestyle, and build better relationships with others as a result.

Here are Freitag’s few suggestions on how you can improve your practice of gratitude:

• Write a gratitude list regularly. List down things and/or people you’re thankful for in a journal. Make sure that you write at least five gratitude points a day/week (whichever frequency you prefer) on your journal — e.g. 1) morning hug from your spouse, 2) a surprise call from an old friend, 3) learning how to knit a scarf, 4) a new French word or phrase learned this week, 5) a job offer — and review your thank-you lists regularly. Better yet, create a “gratitude blog” (on Blogspot or WordPress), where you can post your gratitude lists on a regular basis.

• Count your blessings, and share your ‘praise report’ with another person. While keeping a gratitude journal does help cultivate an attitude of gratitude, sharing your list of blessings you’re thankful for with another person boosts your personal gratitude practice a hundredfold. Hopefully, your positive attitude will rub off on him/her.

• Thank someone today. Think of a person who has helped you tremendously in the past (i.e. did you a great favor) or has inspired you to be the successful person you are today. It can be your mom or dad, your sis, your teacher, your classmate, or your friend. Send him/her a personalized thank-you snail mail, pointing out how he/she made a difference in your life.

• Surround yourself with ‘gratitude practitioners.’ The company you keep is vital to maintaining a thank-you therapy that will work and last for a long time. If you spend more time with grumblers than with grateful people, you’ll soon become one of the whiners, who complain at every hassle that they encounter day in and day out.

• Always try to see the bright side of life. It’s not easy to be thankful when your mind is automatically set on a glass-half-empty mode. True, life is not always a bed of roses — bad things do happen in all parts of the world — but it helps to remain hopeful when things go wrong. Hope is a great thing.

• Look around you and appreciate the beauty of creation. Take time to smell the roses, as the cliche goes. Be thankful for the fresh air, the blue skies, the colorful blooms, the scenic mountains, the laughing children, and all the beautiful things around you.

• Focus on what you have, and not on what you don’t have. Think of the things you do have — i.e. your family and friends, house/apartment, education, job, food on the table, etc. — and make a conscious effort to be thankful for them.

• Say a ‘thank you’ prayer every day. At the end of each day, review how your day went and thank God for all the blessings (e.g. a safe journey to your destination, a sumptuous meal, a productive meeting, a new friend, etc.) that have come your way. Be as specific as possible.

Feeling and expressing gratitude may be quite a challenge in these tough times, but it’s doable. And the sooner you start your own thank-you therapy, the sooner you’ll reap the rewards: a healthier and happier you.

TIDBITS: Knowing how to thank people in different languages may come in handy when you travel to other countries; it’s important to extend this basic courtesy. Here’s a mini list of how to say “Thanks” in different languages (source: wikiHow):

Filipino: Salamat
German: Danke
French: Merci
Italian: Grazie
Spanish: Gracias
Russian: Spaseeba
Hebrew: Toda
Arabic: Shukran
Mandarin: Xiè Xiè (pronouced as “she’eh, she’eh”)

The clutter-filled life

Many of us have had our share of exposure to and experience with clutter, either our own or others’ — a messy working area full to the brim with paperwork, a hallway littered with personal belongings and household appliances, shelves stacked with valuable collectibles, closets filled with clothes that don’t fit anymore, or an entire house covered in piles of unnecessary clutter that had accumulated over the years.

It’s one thing to be an occasional collector of things that you place neatly in their respective storage units. But it’s another to be a chronic hoarder, who collects things in unbelievable excess that it already affects the way you live your life — in a negative way.

The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, through its Older Adults Services Division, defines hoarding as “the excessive collection and retention of things or animals until they interfere with day-to-day functions such as home, health, family, work and social life. Severe hoarding causes safety and health hazards” (see the Hoarding Fact Sheet published here.)

The said fact sheet lists down possible reasons why people hoard:

– Items are perceived as valuable
– Items provide a source of security
– Fear of forgetting or losing items
– Constant need to collect and keep things
– Obtaining love not found from people
– Fear others will obtain their personal information
– Physical limitations and frailty
– Inability to organize
– Self neglect
– Stressful life events

People who keep buying items they don’t really need, live in homes bursting at the seams with forgotten stuff, and who find it hard to let go of things they haven’t used for ages most probably have what is called the “Hoard and Clutter Syndrome,” otherwise known as the “Packrat Syndrome” or “Compulsive Hoarding.” It’s reportedly a clinical obsessive-compulsive disorder, and compulsive hoarders are said to have “the inability to resist the urge to acquire an object, even though acquiring or possessing the object may create problems.”

John (not his real name), a student, used to collect old newspapers in his bedroom. He thought it was a great way to keep himself informed of what was going on. When things were getting a little bit out of control — old newspapers were piling up so fast that there was no more room to walk around John’s room — his parents tried to intervene one day and cleared things out in the room of horrors, without their son’s knowledge. When John got home after the secret cleanup activity, he got so enraged at what his parents had done to his prized collection of old newspapers and used shipment boxes that instead of thanking them for their well-meaning initiative, he cursed them. He felt sabotaged by their act of kindness.

Lisa (not her real name), a widow and mother of four, knew how it was to live during the Second World War. Food was scarce and her children had to make do with meager portions. After the War, where she lost her husband, she moved back to the family home, with her deceased husband’s pension supporting them all. Through the years, she would hoard things — from old pens, magazines, and tin cans to unused toys, plastic containers, and all sorts of bric-a-bracs. She seemed to have found comfort in things.

There’s a BBC show called Life Laundry that helps self-confessed clutterbugs get a fresh start by initiating a two-day decluttering therapy. Its TV presenters, home consultant Dawna Walter and antiques expert Mark Franks visit the homes of these compulsive hoarders and take part in emptying the contents of each home and placing all of them onto the front or back lawn for some rigorous scrutiny and screening.

Things are basically divided into three piles — items that stay, those that will be sold at the car boot sale or given to charity, and those that get destroyed. While Franks scrutinizes and values items that could be sold at the car boot sale, Walter gets the uneasy task of talking to the participants about their hoarding behavior. Most often than not, they (hoarders) end up crying because it’s so hard for them to let go of things they have been clinging onto for so many years. One mother was even holding on to her children’s baby clothes even though they’re all grown-up now! In the end, though, the hoarder realizes the importance of letting go, and walks happily into a clutter-free home that gets redesigned by the BBC team. A liberating experience indeed.

It’s not easy to live with hoarders, as family members of Life Laundry participants confess. A Reader’s Digest article on the Hoarding Syndrome even states that this obsessive-compulsive disorder can even be “dangerous”:

The dust, mildew, mold and rodent droppings commonly found in extreme clutter can irritate allergies or lead to headaches or respiratory problems like asthma for hoarders and their families. In some cases, home maintenance suffers, so individuals may endure freezing winters without heat and sweltering summers with no air conditioning. Clutter also places hoarders and their families, especially the elderly, at high risk of injuring themselves in a fall.

So, if you have been showing signs that you’re a potential compulsive hoarder — or maybe you already are — it’s highly important to address the issue at hand. It’s not only you who suffer, but the people around you as well. Know the cause of the problem and seek help.

When there’s no more space for you to eat, sleep, sit and work properly in your clutter-ridden home, maybe it’s time to turn your landfill of a house into a proper home and take matters under control. People are supposed to own things, and not the other way around.

TIDBITS: Philippine Tourism Secretary Rafael Alunan III once told his staff during a meeting in the ’90s: “The landscape is reflective of the mindscape.” While he was specifically talking about how to handle the country’s tourism programs at that time, what he said could well be applied to how well — or how bad — we manage our homes.