Time Required
15 minutes. Try to make time to do this practice once per week, focusing on a different positive event each week. It might help to do this practice at the same time each week—before bed each Sunday evening, perhaps, or at lunch every Friday.
How to Do It
- Take a moment to think about a positive event in your life, such as an educational or career achievement, the birth of a child, or a special trip you took.
- Think back to the time of this event and the circumstances that made it possible.
- Consider the ways in which this event may never have happened—for example, if you hadn’t happened to learn about a certain job opening at the right moment.
- Write down all of the possible events and decisions—large and small—that could have gone differently and prevented this event from occurring.
- Imagine what your life would be like now if you hadn’t enjoyed this positive event and all the fruits that flowed from it.
- Shift your focus to remind yourself that this event actually did happen and reflect upon the benefits it has brought you. Now that you have considered how things might have turned out differently, appreciate that these benefits were not inevitable in your life. Allow yourself to feel grateful that things happened as they did.
Why You Should Try It
It’s easy to take the good things in life for granted, but research suggests that the more we stop to appreciate what we have, the happier and healthier we are. This exercise is designed to help you increase feelings of gratitude for positive events in your life by visualizing what your life would be like without them. By getting a taste of their absence, you should be able to appreciate their presence in your life more deeply—without actually having to lose them for real.
It’s like being in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life—or Joni Mitchell’s song “Big Yellow Taxi,” where “you don't know what you've got till it's gone.”
Why It Works
Mental subtraction counteracts our tendency to take positive events in our lives as givens. When we consider the circumstances that led to an event, we may be surprised by how unlikely that event actually was, and how lucky we were that it happened as it did. While it can be painful to think about not having experienced an important positive event, this scenario provides a negative contrast against which our current situation can be favorably compared.
Evidence That It Works
Koo, M., Algoe, S. B., Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2008). It's a wonderful life: Mentally subtracting positive events improves people's affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1217-1224.
Participants were asked to think about what their lives would have been like had a positive event never happened; other participants either simply thought about the event or thought about how it was not surprising that the event had happened. The participants who practiced “mental subtraction”—they considered their lives without the positive event—reported feeling more positive states and more gratitude than the other participants did.
For More
For a variation on this practice in which you consider life without an important person in your life, consider this version of the “mental subtraction” practice, which is intended not only to increase feelings of gratitude but to strengthen a close relationship as well.
Imagining how life could have turned out differently can help us appreciate the life we have now. Do you tend to take things for granted? Take our Gratitude quiz to find out:
Comments
and Reviews
Julio Samperio
Melanie Amy Martinez
Becky Navarro
Siempre es bueno tomarnos unos momentos para analizar los buenos y malos momentos, considero que ambos son buenos ya que los malos no siempre son negativos ya que te dejan una enseñanza y siempre que se aprende es algo positivo , en los buenos tomarse el momento y agradecer por cada pequeño escalón que se logra subir en lo personal desde el continuar superándome en mis estudios , el que estoy formando una familia el que estoy en el trabajo que me encanta y tomarse ese momento de ver lo positivo es un impulso para continuar.
Luis Martinez
Excelente reflexión que nos hace recordar en primera instancia lo bella que es la vida y como plus las cosas buenas que nos pone en el camino, el momento mas feliz de mi vida y que no cambiaria por nada es el nacimiento de mi hijo, algo que, aunque quieras, jamás podrás olvidar.
Yazareth Liz Abarca
Me encanta experimentar este tipo de sensaciones. Sí bien, trato de agradecer mucho cada mañana al eterno por cada día y prueba que envía, pero no me había tomado el tiempo de pensar sí las cosas no hubieran pasado o hubieran sido diferentes. Tuve sentimientos encontrados y de verdad agradezco que las cosas se dieron por la vía que tomaron. Siempre voy a hacer este ejercicio con lo bueno y lo malo del día.
Eddie Arias
Me encanto esta actividad ya que muy pocas veces nos tomamos un tiempo en agradecer y darnos cuenta de lo mucho que tenemos o de lo que podemos cambiar para ser mejores !
The Greater Good Toolkit
Made in collaboration with Holstee, this tookit includes 30 science-based practices for a meaningful life.
The Greater Good Toolkit
Made in collaboration with Holstee, this tookit includes 30 science-based practices for a meaningful life.