You struggle to temper your breathing as you remain out of sight in some brush beside a clearing in the forest. Your heart beats like a drum. You strain to be hyper aware of everything around you all at once as you await a sign from another member of your tribe. Failure is not an option. Winter is coming. Everyone depends on this hunt. One false move and it’s a quick painful death for you or a slow painful death for everyone.
FLASH! Suddenly you are transported many hundreds of thousands of years forward (actually around a million by most estimates) to approximately 10000 BC. You look out upon a sad patch of wilted crops. “This was such a good idea last year” you think to yourself. “If we don’t get some rain soon we may have nothing to eat at all. If only we had followed that herd and spent our time hunting instead of staying put...”
FLASH! Fast-forward just over a paltry eleven thousand years to 1347 AD. Over a third of everyone you know in the city has died and more get sick every day. The doctor said something about “bad air.” You start to panic as you realize the room feels stuffy. You quickly open all the shutters and think about how you can’t afford any incense.
FLASH! Six-hundred and sixty-six* years later and over a million years from whence you began, you’re finally back at your desk. You breathe a sigh of relief, but grow a little agitated as you remember that the blog post you’re reading is supposed to be about ‘wealth’ and happiness in grad school.
There is no doubt about it - humans have been struggling to survive throughout our entire evolutionary history. The survival instinct has been hard-wired into our brains. But we do not survive by running quickly or fighting fiercely. We survive because we have developed a keen ability to anticipate what could go wrong, identify what is missing, and seek out appropriate solutions.
These skills make us highly effective problem solvers and allow us to succeed. But they do not lend themselves toward making you feel positive about your life. They are a constant agitator telling you “something isn't right.” This type of critical thinking can really get out of hand when your life is uncertain, becoming a source of paralysis rather than a source of direction.
I believe that grad students are particularly susceptible to this. First, research is about exploring the unknown. This injects a great deal of uncertainty into a grad student’s perception of their future. Second, grad students are adopted by their supervisors precisely because they think we have the potential to develop some pretty serious critical thinking skills (joke’s on them, ha!). To our detriment, we apply those skills as much (or more) to the uncertainty we perceive in our future as we do to our research.
Living a productive life requires a person to spend time identifying problems and working out solutions. But identifying what is going right in life is not required to succeed. It is optional. So the average person is not as good at it as they are at finding problems. How can we possibly begin to combat our eons-old instinct to be perpetually aware of what is wrong while ignoring what is right? The answer is deceptively simple.
Make it mandatory to identify what is right each day.
I didn't realize how powerful this habit could be until I tried it. Nearly two years ago I stumbled across a website that suggested that once every day we should take a moment to come up with three unique things for which we feel grateful. I thought this seemed like an interesting but very old idea and did not expect it to have a measurable effect on my outlook. Moreover, I knew that I would always forget, so I scheduled a daily reminder on my Phone. Every day at 5:00 pm for the past 614 days my Phone has asked me, “what are you grateful for?”
At first I struggled. Sometimes when I was having a particularly bad day I told Phone to shove it. Sometimes I would tell Phone things that I didn't really feel grateful for but knew that maybe I should. Sometimes I would try to pull a fast one on Phone by restating things I had come up with on previous days. But then something began to change. When good things invariably occurred throughout the day I would take more notice than usual. “A-ha!” I would say to myself, “I’ve got something new to placate Phone!”. I would try hard to commit it to memory so I’d have something good to “say” at 5:00 pm. If I got to three things then I would stop looking as I had met that day’s quota. But habit is an incredibly powerful thing. Absentmindedly I began to notice more than three things each day. I didn't need more to satisfy Phone-god** but when I stumbled upon a fourth, fifth, or even sixth thing I figured “What’s the harm if I notice a couple extra?"
After nearly two years of practicing this type of thinking I've found that two major things have changed. First, it’s substantially easier for me to come up with reasons to feel good about each day (practice makes perfect). My expectation is that there are always lots of good things that happen so long as I spend some time to think about it. Consequently, I often have luck with actively improving my own mood if I start to feel out of sorts. This can substantially reduce stress. Second, without consciously trying, I seem to notice and more fully appreciate positive things more often and more frequently as they are actually occurring. Therefore, while appreciating the hidden benefits of "delaying" my life has improved how I feel about the future, the habit of thinking about what goes right each day has improved how I feel about the present.
So..."What are YOU grateful for today?"
FLASH! Suddenly you are transported many hundreds of thousands of years forward (actually around a million by most estimates) to approximately 10000 BC. You look out upon a sad patch of wilted crops. “This was such a good idea last year” you think to yourself. “If we don’t get some rain soon we may have nothing to eat at all. If only we had followed that herd and spent our time hunting instead of staying put...”
FLASH! Fast-forward just over a paltry eleven thousand years to 1347 AD. Over a third of everyone you know in the city has died and more get sick every day. The doctor said something about “bad air.” You start to panic as you realize the room feels stuffy. You quickly open all the shutters and think about how you can’t afford any incense.
FLASH! Six-hundred and sixty-six* years later and over a million years from whence you began, you’re finally back at your desk. You breathe a sigh of relief, but grow a little agitated as you remember that the blog post you’re reading is supposed to be about ‘wealth’ and happiness in grad school.
There is no doubt about it - humans have been struggling to survive throughout our entire evolutionary history. The survival instinct has been hard-wired into our brains. But we do not survive by running quickly or fighting fiercely. We survive because we have developed a keen ability to anticipate what could go wrong, identify what is missing, and seek out appropriate solutions.
These skills make us highly effective problem solvers and allow us to succeed. But they do not lend themselves toward making you feel positive about your life. They are a constant agitator telling you “something isn't right.” This type of critical thinking can really get out of hand when your life is uncertain, becoming a source of paralysis rather than a source of direction.
I believe that grad students are particularly susceptible to this. First, research is about exploring the unknown. This injects a great deal of uncertainty into a grad student’s perception of their future. Second, grad students are adopted by their supervisors precisely because they think we have the potential to develop some pretty serious critical thinking skills (joke’s on them, ha!). To our detriment, we apply those skills as much (or more) to the uncertainty we perceive in our future as we do to our research.
Living a productive life requires a person to spend time identifying problems and working out solutions. But identifying what is going right in life is not required to succeed. It is optional. So the average person is not as good at it as they are at finding problems. How can we possibly begin to combat our eons-old instinct to be perpetually aware of what is wrong while ignoring what is right? The answer is deceptively simple.
Make it mandatory to identify what is right each day.
I didn't realize how powerful this habit could be until I tried it. Nearly two years ago I stumbled across a website that suggested that once every day we should take a moment to come up with three unique things for which we feel grateful. I thought this seemed like an interesting but very old idea and did not expect it to have a measurable effect on my outlook. Moreover, I knew that I would always forget, so I scheduled a daily reminder on my Phone. Every day at 5:00 pm for the past 614 days my Phone has asked me, “what are you grateful for?”
At first I struggled. Sometimes when I was having a particularly bad day I told Phone to shove it. Sometimes I would tell Phone things that I didn't really feel grateful for but knew that maybe I should. Sometimes I would try to pull a fast one on Phone by restating things I had come up with on previous days. But then something began to change. When good things invariably occurred throughout the day I would take more notice than usual. “A-ha!” I would say to myself, “I’ve got something new to placate Phone!”. I would try hard to commit it to memory so I’d have something good to “say” at 5:00 pm. If I got to three things then I would stop looking as I had met that day’s quota. But habit is an incredibly powerful thing. Absentmindedly I began to notice more than three things each day. I didn't need more to satisfy Phone-god** but when I stumbled upon a fourth, fifth, or even sixth thing I figured “What’s the harm if I notice a couple extra?"
After nearly two years of practicing this type of thinking I've found that two major things have changed. First, it’s substantially easier for me to come up with reasons to feel good about each day (practice makes perfect). My expectation is that there are always lots of good things that happen so long as I spend some time to think about it. Consequently, I often have luck with actively improving my own mood if I start to feel out of sorts. This can substantially reduce stress. Second, without consciously trying, I seem to notice and more fully appreciate positive things more often and more frequently as they are actually occurring. Therefore, while appreciating the hidden benefits of "delaying" my life has improved how I feel about the future, the habit of thinking about what goes right each day has improved how I feel about the present.
So..."What are YOU grateful for today?"
----------------------------------
**I'm sure the spirit of Steve Jobs is out there somewhere cackling evilly "Gooood, goooooood...ha ha haaa".
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