gratefulness

Gratitude has emerged as a very popular happiness technique in recent years. The fundamentals behind using gratitude in the pursuit of happiness are sound, but many people struggle to put it into practice. 

Perhaps the biggest challenge is that most of us simply don’t realize just how much we have to be grateful for.

That’s where today’s article comes in. Below, you’ll find six major reasons to be grateful that go far beyond the typical small stuff most gratefulness practitioners talk about. 

Let’s dive right in…

Prosperity

Never before has society been as prosperous as it is today.

If you’re reading this, it probably means you have all the basic material possessions required for a good life. As discussed earlier, only about 20% of global citizens enjoy this privilege today.

Prosperity gets much more exclusive if we go back in history. In fact, for the 99.9% of human history before the industrial revolution, basics like comfortable housing, abundant food and warm clothing were reserved for kings and other royalty only.

Fully appreciating your historically unprecedented prosperity can significantly increase life satisfaction 🙂 

Time

With this prosperity comes a lot more value out of life’s most valuable resource: time.

Over almost all of human history, life was a grim story of hard manual labor to put food on the table. Today, many people spend less than one hour per day on earning their daily calories.

We therefore have the privilege of using our time for pursuing a wide range of other activities, making life much more pleasant and interesting. 

Next time you’re enjoying some free time or any kind of discretionary consumption, spare a thought for all those whose lives were (and still are) one long struggle for life’s most basic necessities. 

Peace

Yes, there are still some warring regions, but the time since the end of second world war has been by far the most peaceful time in human history.

Your chance of dying a violent death today is a tiny fraction of what it was only a few generations ago. And if you were lucky enough to be born into the top 20%, this minute likelihood drops even further. 

To really drive this home, I encourage you to read a little book called Man’s Search for Meaning. It will take your appreciation of peace to the appropriately high level. 

Health

The progress in global health over the past 0.1% of human history has been simply astounding. 

A mere two centuries ago, average life expectancy was only 30 years! Today, it has more than doubled and continues to increase strongly. Those who look after themselves have a genuine shot at living (and living well) to 100 and beyond. 

Infectious diseases and child mortality rates have plummeted, while routine operations today save countless lives that would have been lost only a few generations ago.  

So, if you’ve reached the ripe old age of 30 or have ever benefited from modern medical science, this is a great topic for gratitude 🙂 

Tolerance

The vast majority of human history is characterized by extreme prejudice that makes today’s social discriminations look puny.

For centuries, it was completely normal to treat slaves like animals and women as possessions. There was also extreme prejudice regarding religion and social class, often resulting in outright oppression with frequent bloodshed. 

If you’re anything other than a straight Christian white male born into a rich family, be very thankful for the society we live in today. 

Democracy

The idea that people should have any say in how they are governed is a historically very recent phenomenon.

Since the start of the agricultural revolution thousands of years ago, the people were blatantly exploited by tiny groups of elites without having any say in the matter. 

A democracy is far from perfect, but, for the vast majority of us, it’s a much better deal than the autocracies of the past. A little historical perspective makes it well worth our gratitude 🙂 

Happiness is relative

Happiness is just a feeling, caused by certain chemical and electrical signals in the body.

This feeling can be invoked by almost anything. It’s certainly possible for a desperately poor girl in an African village to derive more happiness from a beautiful flower than a Silicon Valley billionaire from his 10th exotic sports car.  

If you expect Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s, a new Porsche will give you little satisfaction. But if you expect having to walk 10 km to work every day, a brand new bicycle can bring tremendous joy. 

This is the purpose of gratefulness: resetting our benchmark to a more appropriate level. If you manage to set your benchmark to the factually accurate levels described above, your life will suddenly look a lot better. 

And if you can gradually work towards true personal liberty and purpose as discussed yesterday, you may just realize that life can be genuinely awesome 🙂