Audio Attitude

Sometimes simple designs have the best value and are the most elegant. Flooding our daily lives is a steady flow of options we barely have time to consider. I avoid stores for this reason. I almost always walk out with some item that, previous to my store visit, I never knew I needed.

Of course, need is relative. Impulsive decisions are becoming the norm in our culture. The more exposure to choices, the less time we have to think. The more decisions we make without thinking, the more clutter we have in our lives. The more clutter we have, the less attention each item gets. Value diminishes as attention fades.

Think about your decisions in the past week. How much attention to each item or component of your life did you pay?

While scanning my Google Reader feeds this week, I found something very simple at the psyblog. So simple, it caught me off guard. It was elegant. I was not looking for it, but I grabbed it anyway because I immediately saw a use for it. What was it? A boost in my happiness of twenty-five percent. I can use that. Can you?

Meet psychologists Robert Emmons (UC Davis) and Mike McCullough (Univ. Miami). They wanted to find out if the simple gratitude made any difference in people’s experience of happiness. So they designed a study and found that people who spent a little time every week listing five things they were grateful for were twenty-five percent happier than the control group and the group that listed hassles.

Please, be skeptical of studies. I suspect these professors would expect you to be skeptical of their study. Skepticism or not, I will to try the gratitude exercise. It costs nothing. And what better way to start a week than pay a little attention to what I already have?

(Let me start with a few easy items for which I am extremely grateful)
1. My family (this includes everyone, including Gus the dog)
2. My education
3. Employment
4. My senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell
5. A home
6. You

What are yours?