The Book of Joy

famous passage from Tsongkhapa, the fourteenth-century Tibetan master
whose thoughts and writings were an important part of the Dalai Lama’s
formal education. “It’s taught that the best way to create good karma with
the least amount of effort is to rejoice in your good deeds and those of
others.” Rejoicing predisposes us to repeat those good deeds in the future.
Scientists have long known that our brains have evolved with a
negative bias. It was no doubt advantageous for our survival to focus on
what was wrong or dangerous. Gratitude cuts across this default mode of
the mind. It allows us to see what is good and right and not just what is
bad and wrong.
Perhaps because of this bias, people are often skeptical of gratitude
and wonder if it is a naive point of view or will lead to complacency or
even injustice. If we are grateful for what is, will we be less likely to
work for what still needs to be? If the Dalai Lama is able to find things in
his exile that he is grateful for, will he be less willing to stand up to the
Chinese occupation of Tibet?
UC Davis Professor Robert Emmons has been studying gratitude for
over a decade. In one study with his colleagues Michael McCullough and
Jo-Ann Tsang, they found that grateful people do not seem to ignore or
deny the negative aspects of life; they simply choose to appreciate what
is positive as well: “People with a strong disposition toward gratitude
have the capacity to be empathic and to take the perspective of others.
They are rated as more generous and more helpful by people in their
social networks.” They are also more likely to have helped someone with
a personal problem or to have offered emotional support to others.
Emmons and McCullough have also found that people who focus on
gratitude, by keeping a list of what they were grateful for, exercised more
often, had fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives, and
were more positive about the week ahead compared to those who
recorded hassles or neutral life events. Similarly, those who focused on
gratitude were more likely to have made progress toward their important
personal goals. So it seems gratitude is motivating, not demotivating.
Grateful people report more positive emotions, more vitality and
optimism, and greater life satisfaction as well as lower levels of stress