I used gratefulness to rewire my brain

In my experience, Operations folks are often type-cast as negative, worrisome, pessimistic, change averse, etc. After moving from a Business function to Operations over a decade ago I started receiving this feedback as well. It’s something I’ve struggled with and have actively tried to change. It’s difficult to effectively escape being labeled like that when your core role at a company is to manage risk, handle problems and failures, and cobble together less than ideal tools and processes to make the business run 24x7.

That’s what Ops is paid to do. To give you the truth, tell you how bad it could be, and how we’re going to mitigate and manage it all when things don’t go as expected. The moment your ops leader tells you nothing could go wrong and everything is perfect is the moment you should be most afraid. It’s our role and it’s hard for that not to rub off on how our personalities are displayed when you have to be “on” 24x7.

That’s where I found myself in 2017. Seeing risks and problems was almost an autonomic response both inside and outside of work. The folks I spent my days with were skilled at it too; I needed them to be. But I wanted to figure out how to break the cycle and get back to seeing the positive first. I wanted to see the possible more easily. The half full glass instead of the half empty one. That’s what lead me down the gratefulness path.

Exploration

For the last several years a lot has been written about mindfulness, gratitude, gratefulness, and the like. I’ve taken some useful courses at work, tried the Headspace app, read some books, but not much seemed to stick. Some of it seemed gimmicky, self-righteous, or too ‘it’s going to solve all your problems in life’ for me.

At the end of 2017 I found a couple of things that did resonate with me. First, some peers at work told me about and I watched the Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work | TED Talk. I liked it and the task part didn’t seem too tedious. (a.k.a. I’ll actually do it.)

We’ve found there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive. In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully. We’ve done these things in research now in every company that I’ve worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they’re grateful for for 21 days in a row, three new things each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative, but for the positive first.

Journaling about one positive experience you’ve had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it. Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. We find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we’ve been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at hand. And finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness. We get people, when they open up their inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their support network.

Then I listened to an interview with Tim Ferriss on NPR. He was discussing his book, Tribe of Mentors. In the interview he also referenced journaling and gratefulness and how it’s helped him personally. He self-described as a person who’d get 98% on a test but agonize over the failure of being 2% wrong. That resonated with me.

He shared that utilizing these two simple practices allowed him to change that inner critic and focus on the fact he got an A and that was pretty damn good. I did a quick search of free apps because I knew if I tried to write with pen and paper it would just be an excuse not to do it. I chose Grateful on the app store.

• I use the random prompt questions to write a short blurb about that specific day (I know myself well enough to know I wouldn’t stick to traditional journaling)
• I write the 3 new and unique things I was grateful for each day in the notes section
• I use reminders so it prompts me at a time of my choosing every day to open the app and write for 2 minutes
• And you could also back date an entry so I could forgive myself for missing a day here and there!

Usage

I discovered that writing down 3 new and unique things every day took a surprising amount of effort at first. I made the mistake of not thinking deeply enough and used broad / overgeneralized statements of what I was grateful for. That made not repeating a previous days’ grateful bullet pretty hard.

I ended up having to dig way deeper and go further and further back into the years to find new grateful items to write. The process of going back and remembering people and situations that I’m grateful for felt really good. Spectacular and heartwarming actually. Memories came flooding back and I ended up wanting to continue this exercise for as long as I could remember more of what I’m grateful for.

This resulted in going well beyond the 21 day target to write for about 3 months. As a result of reliving memories and feelings I ended up reaching out to people I wrote about to tell them how grateful I was. I talked about it at work and with friends. I even shared several weeks of my journal with my team. I found it was easy to keep writing until I ran out of meaty things to say.

The effect I experienced was as described in the research. When encountering conversations, people, and situations that would have normally triggered my autonomic risk management response, my first thoughts were the glass half full versions. I realized that even when faced with the half empty narratives from others I could more easily see the alternate take.

It no longer took the same effort to see the possible, the positive, the happy path. Nor did it blind me to still being able to see risks and articulate them. It actually worked for me and people noticed the change.

Takeaways

I realized after about a year I feel the urge to write again. I don’t continue for 3 months like the first time but I do it for about a month; until I run out of meaty things to say again. I’ve also used it when I’ve been struggling to see the positive in a situation. It seems to help me process my feelings in a different way than before and see other points of view.

I’m very happy I tried this. It works for me. Others like meditation apps do not. I know Gratitude has a dark side for some people so proceed with caution. I’m going to continue journaling and remembering (and sharing) what I’m grateful for.

I am grateful for the people I love and who love me, for the mentors who support me and give me kicks in the ass whether I want it or not, for the long list of women in my life who made me who I am, for compliments (we don’t give or receive enough of them), and for being able to become strong in the broken places when the world breaks us.