Gratitude practices as they’re generally presented in pop culture—usually some form of grateful-for-what-you-have exercise, like “Every day, write a list of ten things you’re grateful for”—don’t cut it, empirically speaking. When Emily tried this, it always made her feel worse because it just reminded her of how many people don’t have those things, which made her feel helpless and inadequate.
Then she read the research herself and followed the instructions of the evidence-based interventions…and it worked like a charm. There are two techniques that really get the job done, and neither involves gratitude-for-what-you-have. The key is practicing gratitude-for-who-you-have and gratitude-for-how-things-happen.
A Short-Term Quick-Fix Gratitude Boost is gratitude-for-who-you-have. Mr. Rogers, accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award, asked everyone in the audience to take ten seconds to remember some of the people who have “helped you love the good that grows within you, some of those people who have loved us and wanted what was best for us, […] those who have encouraged us to become who we are.” That’s how to gratitude-for-who-you-have.
If you want to go big, write that person a letter expressing how they helped you.21 You might even want to give it to them. You might even—and this is only if you want a super-burst of gratitude—read the letter out loud to them. A “gratitude visit” like this can boost your well-being for a full month, or even up to three months.22
A Long-Term Gratitude Lifter is gratitude-for-how-things-happen. At the end of each day, think of some event or circumstance for which you feel grateful, and write about it:
1. Give the event or circumstance a title, like “Finished Writing Chapter 8” or “Made It Through That Meeting Without Crying or Yelling.”
2. Write down what happened, including details about what anyone involved, including you, did or said.
3. Describe how it made you feel at the time, and how you feel now, as you think about it.
4. Explain how the event or circumstance came to be. What was the cause? What confluence of circumstances came together to create this moment?
If, as you write, you feel yourself being drawn into negative, critical thoughts and feelings, gently set them to one side and return your attention to the thing you’re being grateful for.
The research asks people to do this for three events every day, for at least a week, but Emily couldn’t be bothered to do that much, so she did it for just one event per day for three weeks. And it was great. It trained her brain to notice not just the positive events themselves, but also the personal strengths she leveraged to create them and the external resources that made it possible.23
Sophie said to us, “So last night I told Bernard about the mean girls at the department store. And do you know what he said?”
“What did he say?”
“He put on this serious face and said, ‘Your life might have been as rich as any woman’s, if only…you sweated your butt off on the treadmill and wore a size six.’ And I was like, ‘Janice Lester!’ and he was like, ‘That episode is the worst, right?’ And…”
And she kept talking about how the evening went, and it was clear to everyone that she had crossed a threshold. Could there be anything more romantic than a guy who really gets the madwoman in your attic?
That was a couple years ago. They bought a house together recently. His kids love her, and she is constantly surprised by how much she loves them. And whenever Sophie encounters what she calls “the usual nonsense,” she sends Bernard a text: “JANICE LESTER!!!!!”
* * *
—
This is the last chapter and the culmination of everything we’ve learned so far, so let’s ask a fundamental question: Why does anything in this book matter? Does it matter how well we are—that is, how free we are to move through the cycles and oscillations of being human? If we’re not hurting other people, does it really matter how exhausted, overwhelmed, and self-critical—how burned out—we feel?
It does matter. It matters because we, your authors, want the world to be a better place. We want life to become increasingly good for an increasing number of people. We think you want that, too. And you are part of the world.
When you are cruel to yourself, contemptuous and shaming, you only increase the cruelty in the world; when you are kind and compassionate toward yourself, you increase the kindness and compassion in the world. Being compassionate toward yourself—not self-indulgent or self-pitying, but kind—is both the least you can do and the single most important thing you can do to make the world a better place. Until you are free, we can’t be fully free, which is why all of us together have to collaborate to create that freedom for everyone. Our wellness is tied to yours.
The world does not have to change before we turn toward our internal experience with kindness and compassion. And when we do, that all by itself is a revolution. The world is changed when we change, because we are, each of us—and that includes you—a part of the world. This is our shared home, and we, Emily and Amelia, are your sisters.
tl;dr:
? We each have a “madwoman” in our psychological attic. She has the impossible job of managing the chasm between what we are and what Human Giver Syndrome has told us to be.
? Self-compassion and gratitude empower us to recognize the difference between who we are and who the world expects us to be, without beating ourselves up or shutting ourselves off from the world.
? Self-compassion is hard because healing hurts and growing stronger can be scary. But it’s worth it because healing helps us grow mighty enough to heal Human Giver Syndrome.
? We don’t have to wait for the world to change before we begin to heal ourselves and one another.
CONCLUSION
JOYFULLY EVER AFTER
We wanted to give Burnout an optimistic and empowering “happily ever after” of an ending, but as we finished writing this book, we noticed something strange: our “self-help” book barely mentions happiness.
It turns out we didn’t write a book about “happiness.”
But there’s a different word that appears in every chapter:
Joy.
Isn’t joy the same as happiness? Oh, no. As Brittney Cooper writes in Eloquent Rage, “Happiness is predicated on ‘happenings,’ on what’s occurring, on whether your life is going right, and whether all is well. Joy arises from an internal clarity about our purpose.”1 When we engage with something larger than ourselves, we make meaning; and when we can resonate, bell-like, with that Something Larger, that’s joy. And because our Something Larger is within us, no external circumstances can take away our source of joy, no matter the “happenings” around us.
But it’s more than that.
As we considered what it means to live not “happily ever after,” but joyfully ever after, we realized one last heretical truth: It doesn’t come “from within.” It comes from connection with fellow givers.
The stepping stone to joy is feeling like you are “enough,” and feeling “not enough” is a form of loneliness. We need other people to tell us that we are enough, not because we don’t know it already, but because the act of hearing it from someone else—and (equally) the act of taking the time to remind someone else they’re enough—is part of what makes us feel we’re enough. We give and we receive, and we are made whole.
It is a normal, healthy condition of humanity, to need other people to remind us that we can trust ourselves, that we can be as tender and compassionate with ourselves as we would be, as our best selves, toward any suffering child. To need help feeling “enough” is not a pathology; it is not “neediness.” It’s as normal as your need to assure the people you love that they can trust themselves, that they can be as tender and compassionate with themselves as you would be with them. And this exchange, this connection, is the springboard from which we launch into a joyful life.
Wellness, once again, is not a state of mind, but a state of action; it is the freedom to move through the cycles of being human, and this ongoing, mutual exchange of support is the essential action of wellness. It is the flow of givers giving and accepting support, in all its many forms.