You’ve likely heard that there are tons of positive benefits to cultivating a gratitude practice. We’ve got empirical proof of this. The science is in. Gratitude elevates mood, improves sleep, strengthens connections, and boosts immunity. The list goes on and on.
I’m going to add my own Life Coach item to this list. Gratitude improves our future planning skills. It shines a light on who we are and what we love in real time. A regular gratitude practice is invaluable to knowing thy changing self.
We might be firm in our values and clear in our plans, but life exists on wildly shifting sands. If we’re not paying attention, we may not notice how quickly and vastly the landscape has changed. A gratitude practice is a great way to stay in touch with ourselves as the world turns and we evolve.
Surprises: A Cautionary Tale
A co-worker of mine and his wife are lifelong birders, and it was their dream to one day get an RV and follow the birds. As retirement approached, they moved forward with their plan. They were ready to live the dream! They sold their home and bought a big, beautiful RV so they could enjoy the RV lifestyle during the last five years of their careers.
They quickly learned a few things about themselves and RV life:
-To comply with local residency laws, they needed to pack up and relocate their RV with some frequency. Even with all the hydraulics and automation they paid to have built into the RV, there was still some physical labor they hadn’t expected. When my co-worker’s old football injury acted up, his wife was left to do this burdensome work alone.
-As a WFH employee, my co-worker’s wife had her home office in the RV. She was frequently frustrated by an unreliable internet connection and, as a result, she wasn’t enjoying her work like she used to.
-With the RV closer to the office, my co-worker’s commute was reduced, but he was finding it hard to enjoy his newfound free time. He was away from the community he’d lived in for 30 years and couldn’t participate in evening prayer groups as he’d liked. Finding a new faith community was difficult, and it was hard for him to find his groove.
Lessons learned. Within a year, they bought a new home and parked the RV. They use it for vacations and love it. This costly experience revealed to them a few critical things about their needs, specifically around Physical Wellness, Community Connection, and Work Satisfaction. The good news is, they now know a lot more about 100% RV living and will be better prepared to do the calculus as they revise their retirement plan.
Planning to Minimize Surprise
While my friend and his wife were extremely thoughtful going into their RV experiment, hindsight shows us that they didn’t take into account all of the enjoyable aspects of their current life that they would have to sacrifice. It’s hard to know, and unfortunately human brains aren’t great at projecting into the future, particularly when the future plans revolve around following your bliss.
Overestimating possible good outcomes is called optimism bias, and it’s one of the dangers inherent in planning a glorious future doing something we love with someone we love. On its face, it might seem like gratitude would feed into optimism bias. While it’s true that gratitude fosters a positive outlook, the resulting optimism it produces is couched firmly in reality.
Optimism bias says our plans for the future will bring maximum happiness and minimum hardships. A gratitude practice shows us that despite our hardships, we can endure them because there are always things in our lives that bring us joy.
- Optimism bias says, “The future will be bright.”
- Gratitude-driven optimism says, “Every day will have bright spots.”
The more we notice the daily joys of everyday living, the more easily and gracefully we can endure hardships.
Stay Connected To Your Joy
You likely see how gratitude helps us avoid big surprises in our future plans while reinforcing our ability to endure hardship and bounce back from disappointments by:
- Giving us a positive outlook and realistic expectations from day to day
- (Some days aren’t great, but there’s always something to be grateful for.)
- Helping us develop more resilience over time
- (Bad day? It isn’t the end of the world.)
- Providing invaluable self-knowledge that could help us plan for the future
- (I love my wifi. A reliable internet connection is a must-have.)
Nothing connects you to your higher self, your joy, and your ability to endure better than gratitude. And once you connect with these things on a daily basis, knowing everything you value and measuring carefully will help you to be more confident in enacting meaningful long-term changes … or not if your path is already aligned!
