The Key to Gratitude Is Not Focusing on Yourself
As Thanksgiving approaches, I have been reflecting on a conversation I had with Dr. Robert Emmons, the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude. He told me something that has stuck with me because it aligns so closely with my thinking on our nation’s growing mental health challenges. When I asked him about ways people can cultivate gratitude in their daily lives, he responded that “the biggest lesson that I have learned is that self-forgetfulness promotes gratefulness.”
He explained that “a focus on how we are doing in being grateful is actually counterproductive. It makes gratitude a burden. It reduces it to another item on our to-do list. A self-improvement project.” This runs counter to our modern self-help culture that turns everything into an inward-focused, self-monitoring task. However, as Dr. Emmons put it, gratitude is not about us. It is about focusing our attention on another person, on what another person has done or given to us, on what we could not do or give to ourselves.
In other words, gratitude is not about tracking your own feelings. It is about recognizing and honoring another person. And by directing our attention to others rather than fixating on our feelings, we actually end up improving our own wellbeing. Research backs this up. Studies show that gratitude practices focused on other people, such as writing gratitude letters and expressing appreciation directly to others increases positive emotions and life satisfaction.
Gratitude is just one example of what I believe should be a broader shift in how we approach psychological health. As I have been exploring in my work, we live in an era obsessed with looking inward. We are constantly encouraged to check in with our feelings, to practice self-care, to work on ourselves. However, there is mounting evidence that the best way to improve our own wellbeing is not to focus on it directly, but to direct our attention outward toward others and the world around us.
Consider one study where researchers compared inward-focused cognitive behavioral therapeutic exercises (identifying and revising negative thought patterns) with outward-focused acts of kindness (engaging in activities that improve other people’s lives). Both interventions reduced anxiety and depression symptoms weeks after research participants completed them. However, performing the acts of kindness led to the greatest mental health improvements. The study also found that acts of kindness are especially effective at improving mental health because they take people’s minds off their own problems. Other research further highlights the distinct utility of outward social action by determining that acts of kindness focused on others, what we might call outward oriented acts, but not acts of kindness focused on the self, or inward oriented acts, boost psychological wellbeing and reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.
This is not about dismissing the value of self-reflection or denying the importance of addressing our own needs. Rather, it is about recognizing that human beings are fundamentally existential beings with a deep need for meaning, and that meaning comes less from looking inward and more from engaging outward with the world around us.
For over two decades, I have been conducting research on the human need for meaning in life. When I first started this work, I viewed meaning as largely a philosophical and contemplative endeavor. After all, humans are able to ask existential questions about meaning because of our advanced intellectual capacities. But after years of conducting research and studying related scholarly work, I came to better understand that meaning is found more in socially agentic action than it is in introspection about the nature of the human condition. We find meaning by playing a significant role in the lives of others.
The key to gratitude is the key to flourishing more broadly. We thrive when we turn our attention away from our own internal states and toward the people around us. We become grateful not by trying to feel grateful but by noticing and honoring the goodness of others. We improve our own wellbeing not by endlessly examining our feelings but by directing our energy toward improving the lives of people around us.
As you approach Thanksgiving this year, I encourage you to turn outward. Focus on the specific people who have made your life better. Write that letter. Make that phone call. Show up for someone who needs you. Contribute something meaningful to your community. Express your appreciation directly to someone who has touched your life in a meaningful way. These are the other-focused actions that Dr. Emmons describes as paving the royal road to gratefulness.
Have a great weekend!
Clay
Doesn’t this support the healthy practice of Christians expressing gratitude to a personal God?
Clay, I can't express just how meaningful and salient this post is. Following the advice of so many guides and scholars of happiness and self-betterment, I've been jotting a short list of daily gratitudes for years. It's helped me be more in tune with gratitude in general; I do feel it genuinely, most days, about something.
But reading your post had me see that there's always been a background feeling that was something like virtue signaling. A little greedy. And the bit about it being a task, another tic on a checklist for ME, that rang so true.
My mantra for my 60s is creating and fostering community and meaning for myself and others. I'm thrilled to have a different, more genuinely productive spin on this. Many thanks!