Life advice so nice, it deserves to be said twice

Credit: Barista Pro Shops (thank you!)

When I was a kid, my mom sometimes gave me life advice in the form of rhymes. For instance, this one from road trips:

Don’t stick your arm out quite so far. It might go home with another car.

Very effective. To this day, I keep my hands inside vehicles and, as a result, have retained all my limbs.

Then there was my mom’s way of encouraging my sister and me to cooperate:

Teamwork makes the dream work!

Rhyming maxims can be effective, partly because they stick so easily to your neurons. I just came up with a meta piece of advice:

An adage with a rhyme can be quite sublime.

In fact, one of my favorite bits of wisdom is a rhyming couplet:

Don’t get furious. Get curious.

It’s one I think about every day in this outrage-inducing era.

Of course, just because something rhymes doesn’t make it true. Exhibit A: “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit” from the O.J. Simpson trial. That doesn’t strike me as a flawless syllogism.

So there’s a spectrum of rhyming advice. And this brings me to my main topic: In honor of tomorrow’s holiday, I’d like to talk about this old saw:

Have an attitude of gratitude.

Which is…okay. I give that a 5 out of 10 on the official Jacobs Scale of Rhyming Maxims.

The reason I’m giving it a mediocre score is not because I’m opposed to gratitude. Quite the contrary. I wrote an entire book about the importance of gratitude.

The problem is that “have an attitude of gratitude” is a hard piece of advice to follow. It’s sort of like telling someone who is depressed that they should “snap out of it.” Or the Partridge Family’s toxically positive command to “c’mon, get happy.”

People rarely experience an emotion just because someone tells them to.

It’s like telling someone, “Get taller!” or “Don’t throw up.” (Related pro tip: Telling your spouse to “calm down” does not generally have stellar results).

Instead, I’m a fan of an entirely different gratitude advice:

Act AS IF you are grateful.

It doesn’t rhyme, but I find it wiser and more effective.

If you take concrete actions – such as forcing yourself to write thank-you notes – you’ll often find that your mood will change to match those actions.

Alter your behavior, and the emotions often follow.

That’s what I did for a book on gratitude, which I wrote a few years ago. I went around the world and thanked a thousand people who had anything to do with my morning cup of coffee, from the farmers in South America to the barista in the coffee shop down the street.

It wasn’t easy. I’d wake up in my default grumpy mood, but I’d force myself to act as if I were grateful. I made myself type out emails to the designer of my coffee cup. Or I’d call the woman who did pest control for the warehouse where my coffee beans were stored. “I know this might sound odd, but I’d like to thank you for keeping the insects out of my coffee.” To which she responded, “That is odd. But thank you. I don’t get a lot of recognition in my line of work.”

And after a few minutes of such forced gratitude, I’d start to feel grateful for real. My brain caught up with my actions.

One of my favorite maxims (which doesn’t rhyme at all) is this:

It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.

(There’s a big debate about who first said it, with one likely candidate being a 19^th-century American minister, but thanks to whoever did.)

All this is to say that I’m a fan of any ritual that gently compels people to list people or things that make their life better. To recognize the unrecognized. There are many versions of this ritual. You could write down three things you’re grateful in the morning.

My mom and I trade emails every day with one thing we’re grateful for (our pets are a recurring theme).

And there’s the classic Thanksgiving meal ritual of going around the table and having everyone say what they are grateful for.

Sometimes this Thanksgiving ritual results in bland, knee-jerk responses such as “my family” or “Nintendo” (the latter was my kids’ answer every year when they were young). Which is fine. But I find that more specific prompts can yield more interesting answers. You could try asking family members to answer one or two specific categories, such as…

1. A stranger you are grateful for:

For me: The woman on the street last week who told me I dropped my glove (which I had bought five minutes before, so thank you).

2. A book/movie/song you are grateful for:

My answer: The Mark Twain biography by Ron Chernow. Favorite fact: Early on in his career, Mark Twain tried to go to Brazil to become a coca leaf importer. Fortunately, he failed, though I would love to read an alternate-history novel about Twain as a narco kingpin.

4. A mentor you’re grateful for:

I’m eternally grateful to Ken Maryanski from the Antioch Daily Ledger, the small California newspaper where I had my first job. He rewrote my articles every day, which was embarrassing but ultimately educational.

5. A technology you’re grateful for:
Admittedly, technology might be ruining our democracy with toxic social media. But it’s not all bad. I do love my Remarkable writing tablet, which I use every morning to brainstorm.

6. A service you’re grateful for:

I’ve taken to watching movies with the audio description feature on. Originally, this feature was designed for people with vision problems, but I find it helpful and often well-written. Here’s the audio description of the Netflix logo: “A red letter N unfolds into a spectrum of colors.” Poetic! (Julie hates this feature, FYI, so it’s not for everyone.)

So where does that leave me and rhyming gratitude advice? Well, instead of “Have an attitude of gratitude,” might I suggest some alternatives that more directly reference the act of thanking:

a) Deed before creed.

This is a classic phrase from Jewish culture. The idea is that if you act in an ethical way (do the deed), then your brain will catch up, and you’ll start to see the importance of ethical living (it will change your creed). At least that’s my interpretation.

b) Take action, and you’ll get emotional traction!

I came up with that one this morning. And yes, I know! Order your T-shirt now, because they will sell out.

Then there’s the chestnut…

c) Fake it till you make it.
Which is okay, but not perfect. To me, the phrase “make it” is a little off the mark. You cannot guarantee an outcome in the real world, but you can do things to increase the likelihood of a mood shift. Which is why I prefer the following version, which sadly doesn’t rhyme but does have some alliteration.

Fake it till you feel it.

Before I go, I want to give one more plug for “Get curious, not furious,” which I think could be especially helpful during potentially tense Thanksgiving conversations:

If I’m talking to someone who is on the opposite side of a political issue, my default mode has always been to go into combat with facts as my weapons. Tell them they are wrong because of X,Y and Z facts.

This approach rarely works. In fact, it’s often counterproductive. It polarizes both sides, and often ends up making us both angry.

Instead, I now try curiosity. Why does she believe what she believes? Why do I believe what I believe? What types of evidence would it take to change our minds? And if we continue to believe different things, where can we go from there? Is there any action we can both agree on that would be productive?

Instead of a war, it’s a cooperative adventure to find the truth. It’s solution-oriented.

This approach has several advantages. First, it’s much more pleasant than yelling until veins pop out of my head. Second, I think it’s more likely to yield solutions, even if they are imperfect. We are more flexible thinkers when we are not furious, as some research has shown. And this curiosity approach is more likely to change people’s minds. (It’s related to a promising technique— called deep canvassing—that focuses on the participants asking the puzzling question: Why do we believe what we believe?)

I’ll end by typing out this sentence: Thank you to everyone who reads this newsletter; I’m immensely grateful.

I won’t command you to be grateful, but if it helps foster that emotion, I would love any comments about things you are grateful for.

Or any rhyming advice you have. Thanks!