Investing in Gratitude Can Pay Long-Term Happiness Dividend

I recently attended a weeklong meditation retreat at Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe. Every afternoon, the teachers would give a talk. One that really resonated with me was about the practice of gratitude.

“The root of joy is gratefulness. It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful,” Zen teacher and ER doctor Wendy Dainin Lau told us in the day’s dharma talk, quoting the Benedictine theologian Brother David Steindl-Rast, a frequent visitor to Upaya.

The idea that something as simple as being grateful can bring us happiness felt to me like a key.

Dr. Lau went on to talk about how easy it is to believe we deserve our privilege, when, in reality, everything we have, including the very condition of being alive, has been given to us.

So how to cultivate gratitude?

As Brother David puts it: “How can we live gratefully? By becoming aware that every moment is a given moment. It’s a gift.

“My simple recipe for a joyful day is this,” he says. “Stop and wake up. Look and be aware of what you see. Then go on with all the alertness you can muster for the opportunity the moment offers.”

My own life has been marked by a restless dissatisfaction, the constant yearning for something more, something better, something different. Our consumer society is driven by just such compulsions, egged on by social media and advertising that make us feel inadequate, incomplete and ever hungry for something we believe will satisfy us: for that new phone, new pair of jeans or spiced latte, only to find that once we have it, we want something else.

As an investment adviser, I see the contrast between people who are grateful for what they have and those who are fearful of not having enough; between those who live from a sense of abundance and those who are caught in a mindset of scarcity. Interestingly, their attitudes have little to do with how much money they actually have.

I’ve worked with clients for 25 years and have seen how those who are grateful for their lives have grown happier over time. They also tend to be better investors: patient, long-term, resolute. And they are some of the most generous people I know. From their own sense of good fortune has sprung the desire to share their bounty through gifts of money, time and attention to others. Their gratitude, and the natural generosity that arises from it, is the opposite of entitlement.

Gratitude, moreover, is good for you. Research into the science of gratitude at the University of California, Berkeley shows practicing it can improve your physical and mental health, strengthen your immune system, reduce loneliness and depression, and build emotional resiliency.

“Stop. … Look. … Go. …” is how Dr. Lau summarized Brother David’s formula for cultivating grateful awareness and then manifesting it through service. Same as you would tell a child how to cross the road.

Sometimes, stopping and looking can be helped by a simple exercise, like writing down a list of family members, friends, pets, teachers, mentors, caregivers or even strangers who have made a difference in our lives. Then, filled with the warmth that arises, we can consider how we want to move forward.

This new year, my resolution is to remember this teaching and try to manifest it more in my own life. To learn from my clients who have embodied it in theirs, and from teachers like Dr. Lau and Brother David whom I’ve had the luck to encounter along the way.