Summary
· Things Go Right
· Our Inherent Negativity Bias
· Noticing What’s Working
· Crashing the Jeep
Quotes
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G.K. Chesterton
Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.
Eckhart Tolle
Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity...it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Melody Beattie
I’m Glad You’re Here
Welcome to the Simple Ways to Have a Good Life newsletter, your monthly guide to cultivating the life you want without spending money on gurus, gimmicks, or influencers. Two decades of helping people change their lives has taught me that the best things are simple and don't require spending a dime. I use this space to share those things.
A Simple Way to Have a Good Life
This whole month is about gratitude. Practicing gratitude is one of the most important things we can do. There are things to be grateful for in every situation. I've been working with people for 20 years now, and I've learned that grateful people are happier, healthier, and more resilient than people who aren't.
Being grateful is not something we just are. It's a choice that we make. Sometimes, we have to make that choice every few hours or even every few minutes, but it's worth it. We are allowed to acknowledge the darkness in the world and the difficulties in our lives and still be grateful for the good things. This is not ignoring reality, nor is it the dreaded toxic positivity we hear so much about from the modern-day gurus on social media.
As a culture, we have adopted the idea that the validity of your experience as a person is rooted in how much you've suffered. This has led to people competing to see who has suffered the most, which forces them to invest in the things in their lives that are not working and keep the focus on how bad things are in the world. This is a well-paved, well-lit, no-speed limit road to misery. Gratitude is your off-ramp.
I try to be honest with everyone who reads this. I've dealt with a lot of mental illness throughout my life. I've dealt with drug and alcohol addiction. I have been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD. I have not lived my life in a bubble where everything goes well.
I used to be invested in the idea that my worth and validity came from the things that were wrong with me, and I wore them like a cape. Predictably, this identification with the things that were wrong with me allowed them to grow until they took over my life.
When I learned to practice gratitude and to focus on how many things actually go right, everything changed. I was still aware of the things that did not go well and the suffering in the world, but I also had space for everything that was going right. We are allowed to acknowledge that the world can often be hellish and that there are many wonderful things.
I understand that this goes against the narrative that the media sells us because death and terror drive more clicks than the mundane fact that most people do the right thing. A small percentage of the population is responsible for a large percentage of the crimes. For every one person who harms you, there are thousands who help and millions who simply leave you alone.
An Example
We are hardwired to notice what isn't working. Our minds have an inherent negativity bias because they don't need to spend energy keeping track of everything that goes right.
I had an office downtown for a little over six years. I went to the office seven days a week for the first year or so as I was trying to get my counseling practice off the ground. I would often go there and back multiple times a day because I would have a client at 8:00 in the morning, 3 in the afternoon, and sometimes at 8:00 or 9:00 PM at night. If someone wanted an appointment, I was there.
I cut back on the amount of time I was in my office over the years, but I was still there a at least two or three days a week by the end. I always went the same way, where I would drive to the Interstate and loop around to my office because our roads around the downtown area are terrible, and I try to take care of my truck. It's safe to say that I went to my office at least five times a week for six years, meaning I drove my little route over 1500 times (this is a low estimate).
I had to put my cat to sleep one morning before going to the office. He was my best friend for a long time, and I was distraught. I accidentally rear-ended someone as we were merging onto the access road on my way to the office that morning. Nobody was hurt, and I never even heard from the other guy's insurance about it. The front bumper of my truck is still crooked, but apart from that there weren’t any lasting consequences.
As I said, I went through that one intersection a bare minimum of 1,500 times without incident, but I think about that accident every single time I go through it to this day. I'm even extra careful there even though it is no different than any other intersection in my town.
1 in 1500 are pretty good odds, but my mind's inherent negativity bias remembers that something there almost hurt us once, so it remembers it. It does this by ignoring all the times I went through that intersection with no trouble, while also ignoring the hundreds of other intersections in town where I've never had a problem.
That's the only accident I've had in the last 22 years, so the number is probably something like 1 in 25,0000 intersections or something, but I still remember it.
A Practice
This inherent negativity bias is there to keep us alive, but we don't live a survival-oriented existence anymore, so we need to consciously push back against it. I feel like I've talked about this on here before, but it might have been the podcast: one of the best ways to help shift this negativity bias is to keep track of how many things go right.
I do this with a little lap counter that I bought on Amazon for $6. Whenever I catch myself slipping into pessimism or negativity, I carry it with me for a day and click it every time something goes right. It's important to understand what I mean when I say things go right.
Waking up in the morning is something going right.
Having heat and running water is something going right.
Having coffee to drink is something going right.
Being able to walk is something going right.
Being able to take a shower and brush my teeth is something going right.
Having clothes to wear is something going right.
Having a family to cook for and clean up after is something going right.
My truck is starting is something going right.
Living in a country with a functioning infrastructure so that I have roads and stop lights is something going right.
Going to my office to see clients is something going right.
You get the gist. We tend to focus on things going right when they are extraordinary. Someone gives us a gift, it's an especially nice day, or we have the morning off are definitely cool things, but they can cause us to ignore just how overwhelmingly often things go right than go wrong. It's so overwhelming that we often don't even notice it.
Journal Prompts
If I take a moment to notice how many things went wrong yesterday, what number do I come up with?
If I take a moment to notice how many things went right yesterday, what number do I come up with?
Can I see the purpose of my brain having an inherent negativity bias?
Is this still as necessary as it might have been when survival was a daily problem?
Can I hold the ideas that there are wonderful and terrible things in the world at the same time?
What’s Going On
A lot of October was taken up by travel and working on the new house. I got to go to New Mexico twice to help my parents winterize the property before things got too cold. I got to go back to finish up and to help with a few things at the Community House. I took Max and Mae with me, and even though I felt a subtle internal pressure to get back quickly, I stayed an extra day to take them out in the Jeep. We had a good time, including a minor collision with another vehicle coming down a very steep and very narrow trail. Now Mae wants to know why I don’t ram the cars in front of us at red lights.
We are getting more and more excited about the new house. It was built in 1978, so there has been some work to do. I've been grateful that my parents have come up to help us do a lot of it. They are the hardest workers I know, and there's very little about home renovation that they don't know, so their help has been invaluable. I had a really good two days fixing up my new workshop with my dad. It was cool to know that I was making an important memory while I was actually making it.
Until Next Time
There was a clear consensus that everyone would enjoy more than just writing, so I am looking into Patreon as the platform for next year. There will be a learning curve associated with it, but I like learning new things, so I think it'll be OK.
I remain grateful to all of you. Thank you for your time.
James