that things are not as they should be.
That you're not successful enough,
your relationship's not satisfying enough,
that you don't have the things you crave.
A chronic dissatisfaction
that makes you look outwards with envy
and inwards with disappointment.
Pop culture, advertising, and
social media make this worse
by reminding you that aiming for anything
less than your dream job is failure,
you need to have great
experiences constantly,
be conventionally attractive,
have a lot of friends,
and find your soulmate,
and that others
have all of these things
and are truly happy.
And, of course, a vast array of
self-improvement products
implies that it's all your fault for
not working hard enough on yourself.
In the last two decades,
researchers have been starting
to investigate how we can
counteract these impulses.
The field of positive psychology emerged,
the study of what makes life worth living,
while cognitive behavioral therapy
was developed to change negative feelings.
Scientists began to ask
"Why are some people happier
and more satisfied than others?"
"And are there ways to apply what
they're doing right to the rest of us?"
In this video, we want to talk about
one of the strongest predictors of
how happy people are,
how easily they make friends,
and how good they are at
dealing with hardship.
An antidote to dissatisfaction, so to speak:
Gratitude.
While gratitude may sound like another
self-improvement trend,
preached by people
who use hashtags,
what we currently know about it is based
on a body of scientific work and studies.
We'll include them in the description.
Gratitude can mean very different things
to different people in different contexts.
It's a character trait, a feeling,
a virtue, and a behavior.
You can feel grateful towards someone
who did something for you,
for random events,
like the weather,
or even for nature or fate,
and it's wired into our biology.
1: How Gratitude Connects Us to Each Other.
The predecessor of gratitude
is probably reciprocity.
It likely evolved as
a biological signal
that motivates animals to exchange
things for their mutual benefit
and can be found
in the animal kingdom
among certain fish,
birds, or mammals,
but especially in primates.
When your brain recognizes that
someone's done something nice for you,
it reacts with gratitude to
motivate you to repay them.
This gratitude makes
you care about others,
and others care about you.
This was important
because, as human brains got
better at reading emotions,
selfish individuals were
identified and shunned.
It became an evolutionary advantage
to play well with others
and build lasting relationships.
For example,
if you were hungry
and someone else showed
you where to find tasty berries,
you felt gratitude towards them
and a bond to return
the favor in the future,
a drive to be pro-social.
When you repaid them,
they felt gratitude towards you.
This brought your ancestors
closer together
and forged bonds and friendships.
So, early forms of gratitude
were biological mechanisms
that modified your behavior
towards cooperation,
which helped humans
to dominate Earth.
But, over time,
gratitude became more than
just an impulse to play fair.
2: The Consequences of Gratitude
Scientists found that gratitude
stimulates the pathways in your brain
involved in feelings of reward,
forming social bonds,
and interpreting other's intentions.
It also makes it easier to save
and retrieve positive memories
Even more, gratitude directly counteracts
negative feelings and traits,
like envy and social comparison,
narcissism,
cynicism,
and materialism.
As a consequence, people who
are grateful, no matter what for,
tend to be happier and more satisfied.
They have better relationships,
an easier time making friends.
They sleep better,
tend to suffer less from
depression, addiction, and burnout,
and are better at dealing
with traumatic events.
In a way, gratitude makes it
less likely that you'll fall into
one of the psychological traps
modern life has set for you.
For example, gratitude
measurably counters
the tendency to forget and
downplay positive events.
If you work long and
hard for something,
actually getting it can feel
daft and empty.
You can find yourself emotionally
back where you started
and try to achieve
the next biggest thing,
looking for that satisfaction,
instead of being satisfied with yourself.
Or, imagine being lonely and
wanting to have more friends.
You actually might have someone
or even multiple people
who want to hang out,
but you might feel that
this is not enough,
that you're a loser and
feel bad about yourself.
So you might turn down
their attempts to hang out
and become more lonely.
If you feel grateful for
your relationships instead,
you might accept invitations
or even take the initiative.
The more often you risk opening up,
the higher the chance of
solidifying relationships
and meeting new people.
In the best case, gratitude
can trigger a feedback loop.
Positive feelings lead to
more pro-social behavior,
which leads to more
positive social experiences
that cause more
positive feelings.
This is a common experience
after serious hardship,
like chemotherapy, for example.
Life can feel amazing
after a crisis is over.
The smallest things can be
bottomless sources of joy,
from being able to taste
to just sitting in the sun
or chatting with a friend.
Objectively, your life is the same or
maybe even slightly worse than before,
but your brain compares
your present experiences
with the times
when life was bad
and reacts with gratitude.
So, in a nutshell,
gratitude refocuses your attention
towards the good things you have,
and the consequences of this shift
are better feelings and
more positive experiences.
While it is great to
know these things,
is there actually a way for
you to feel more of it?
3: How To Make Your Brain More Grateful
The ability to experience
more or less gratitude
is not equally distributed.
You have what's known as
trait gratitude,
that determines how much
you are able to feel it.
It depends on your genetics,
personality, and culture.
This discovery made
scientists wonder
if they could design exercises
that change your trait gratitude
and lead to more happiness.
Let's start with
important caveats.
It's not yet entirely clear to what degree
gratitude can be trained
or how long the effects last.
There are no
magic pills for happiness.
Life is complicated.
On some days, it feels like
you're in control of yourself,
and, on others, you
feel like you're not.
And this is okay.
Also, sometimes pursuing happiness
can make you more unhappy
if you put too much pressure on yourself.
Gratitude should also not be seen
as a solution to depression
or a substitute for professional help,.
It can only be a piece of the puzzle.
It's not the solution to the puzzle itself.
The easiest gratitude exercise,
with the most solid research behind it,
is gratitude journaling.
It means sitting down
for a few minutes,
one to three times a week,
and writing down five to ten
things you're grateful for
It might feel weird at first,
so start simply.
Can you feel grateful
for a little thing?
Like how great coffee is,
or that someone
was kind to you.
Can you appreciate something
someone else did for you?
Can you reflect on which things or people
you would miss if they were gone
and be grateful that they're in your life?
We're all different,
so you'll know what
works for you.
And that's it, really.
It feels almost insulting,
like things shouldn't
be that simple.
But in numerous studies,
the participants reported
more happiness
and a higher general
life satisfaction
after doing this practice
for a few weeks.
And, even more,
studies have found
changes in brain activity
some months
after they ended.
Practicing gratitude may be
a real way to reprogram yourself.
This research shows that
your emotions are not fixed.
In the end, how
you experience life
is a representation of
what you believe about it.
If you attack your core beliefs
about yourself and your life,
you can change your
thoughts and feelings,
which automatically
changes your behavior.
It's pretty mind-blowing that
something as simple as self-reflection
can hack the pathways in our brain
to fight dissatisfaction.
And, if this is no reason
to be more optimistic,
what is?
Being a human is hard,
but it doesn't need
to be as hard.
And, if you actively look,
you might find that your life is
much better than you thought.
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If you're curious and
want to try out gratitude,
we made a thing.
Please note that you don't need to buy
anything from anyone to practice gratitude.
All you need is paper,
a pen, and five minutes.
Having said that, we've made
a Kurzgesagt gratitude journal,
based on studies we've read,
conversations with experts,
and our personal experiences
with gratitude over the last year.
It's structured in a way that
might make it a bit easier
to get into the habit of
gratitude journaling.
There are short explanations
and reflections to mix it up
and make it more interesting.
We've also made it
as pretty as we could.
This video continues
the unofficial series
of more personal,
introspective videos,
from optimistic nihilism to
loneliness and now gratitude.
We don't want to be
a self-help channel,
so we'll keep this sort of video
at roughly one per year.
We hope they're helpful
to some of you.
Thank you for watching.
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