Gratitude, kindness and giving back

Key topic

In this lesson, we discuss some important attitudes and behaviors that all of you need to learn. We also have a similar course for your parents to help you do that. Gratitude and kindness are two concepts that should be part of your philosophy in life. Specifically, we will look at strategies, techniques and activities that foster the development of gratitude and kindness. We will also look at the benefits of practicing these two features but also the downside when you don’t.

Learning objectives

• Understand the concept of gratitude in its full extent
• Figure out ways to be grateful
• As humans we are by our nature sociable beings and we should learn to translate that into kindness and giving back in order to become valuable members of society
• Being grateful makes you kinder to others and yourself

Gratitude, its meaning and importance

We will start today’s lesson by answering the following questions and discussing your answers.

Action Steps – Exercise 1 (10 minutes)

• What do you think gratitude is?
• List one thing that you are grateful for and explain why

Gratitude is the state of being thankful and the readiness to show and express appreciation. Gratitude is useful both as an ethical value and as a practical one. Everyone should be grateful for what they have, of who they are, of how they look and for life in general. That does not imply that we should not try to improve ourselves, our personality and our material possessions.  We should learn how to be thankful for where we are and who we are right now, because that is the result of all our previous good and bad decisions. We should be grateful because we are most probably better-off than most of our fellow human beings on this planet.

There is also a practical aspect in learning how to be grateful. In life we always socialize with people from diverse educational and socioeconomic backgrounds which implies, that we will meet people with more wealth, possessions, social capital and education. Of course, the opposite is true as well; we will meet people with fewer possessions than us. Unfortunately, we always tend to compare ourselves to those who have more than us. Social scientists have named this phenomenon as “Keeping up with the Joneses” after the famous comic of the early 20th century by Arthur P. Momand.

This theory suggests that we start comparing ourselves and our living standards with those of our neighbors, of our peers. There is a contradiction to this phenomenon which supports that even if we improve our standard of living, we simply change who we compare it to. Put simply, we start comparing our standard of living with that of other people who have more. This becomes an endless loop where we are never satisfied with what we have.

Therefore, we need to learn to be grateful for what we have, without of course becoming overly content to the degree it holds us back. As it should be clear by now, gratitude is a variable in the “equation” of happiness, because if we can never be content or at least look at the bright side of our lives, then we can never be happy.

Research by Froh, Sefick, Emmons (2008) suggests that grateful kids between the ages of 11-13 tend to be happier, more optimistic, and have better social support. They also report more satisfaction with their schools, families, communities, friends, and most importantly themselves.

Gratitude is also closely related to the other two themes of today’s lesson: kindness and giving back. These are related as we first need to find our gratefulness for what we have from within, before we are able or even willing to be kind and help others. However, once we learn how to be grateful then we develop the vision and clarity to show empathy and compassion for others who are not as lucky as we are or who do not have the same opportunities as we do. In short, gratitude is valuable and the necessary starting point for developing a healthy sense of sociability. Some of the advantages of gratitude are:

• Gratitude is good for you: Brain research shows that positive emotions are good for our brains.
• One positive emotion brings more positive emotions: When we express gratitude, we feel good and feeling good makes us happy. Gratitude diverts your attention away from negativity and reduces feelings of envy and jealousy.
• Positivity opens up possibilities: Positive emotions boost our ability to learn and make good decisions but also be confident in ourselves that we can try and achieve new things.
• Gratitude improves relationships: when you express your appreciation for the people around you, it will help strengthen your relationship with them. It creates bonds, builds trust and helps you solidify relationships in the family, at school, with friends etc.

Let’s hear what Dr. Robert Emmons, psychologist and world expert on gratitude, has to say about the importance of gratitude:

Robert Emmons: What Good Is Gratitude?

How to learn to be grateful

After watching the video and seeing how good gratitude is for us, let’s see how we can learn to be grateful.  There are various ways for you to learn to be grateful. Acts of kindness that inspire gratitude are usually done on purpose, with intention. Someone noticed us, thought about what we need, and chose to do something to help. Taking a minute to look for the intention behind an act influences gratitude.  An act of kindness has the input of the person who performed it; a cost. The cost may include a material cost, financial cost, effort or time or a combination of these. When we appreciate those costs, we start developing a sense of appreciation for the person who performed it.  Acts of kindness benefit us in ways that may be emotional, material and social.

There are four principles to learning to be grateful:

Notice– First you need to make the effort to notice or identify an act that you should be grateful for; for example, a good deed done for you.

Think– Then you have to start thinking about it in terms of why someone did that for you or why you deserve it, or even why they did what they did (intention).

Feel– Make the effort to reflect on your emotion about the good deed or the thing you were given. Did you feel excited, calm, proud, happy?

Do– Think of what you can do to show appreciation and gratitude. In other words, how to act in order to express your gratitude to someone for a given act.

Easy techniques that can help you develop gratitude:

1. A gratitude journal and/or diary: One of the best ways to understand, appreciate and digest something is to write it down. You can start by picking up a diary and writing down what you like about yourselves and about your life more generally. This will help you to critically think and reflect on all the good things in your life. It will not only help you to fully appreciate all the things that you are grateful for, but you will also have a written record to refer back to on a rainy day. An alternative strategy is to keep a daily journal of your day where you will not only write about your day but also about all the positive things from your day. In short, such exercises give you the ability to look on the bright side and keep in mind all the things that you should be thankful for.
2. Saying thank you: Perhaps the simplest thing you can do and remind yourselves to do is saying thank you. Thank you is literally the expression of gratitude in words. You can also start writing thank you notes to people who give you gifts. Again, this is an exercise that will eventually fill you with gratitude.
3. Create a family gratitude list: Use a piece of paper or a sticky note where everyone in the family, grown-ups and children alike, have to share one thing per week that they feel grateful for in their household. That way, you can also learn from your parents and siblings how to approach gratitude and how to express it.
4. Gratitude at the dinner table: This is a similar activity to the previous one with the added benefit that it makes the entire exercise more intimate.
5. Discuss envy: Envy is the opposite of gratitude. Put simply, envy can come when we are not feeling thankful for what we have and are focusing instead on what others have. Discuss envy with your parents/ teachers/ coaches to help you work through feelings of jealously and to stop comparing yourself to others.

Let’s watch a short video on the things that some teenagers are grateful for:

What teens are thankful for

Kindness and giving back

For most of you here, your dream is to become professional athletes. Part of being an athlete, and something that will be expected from you, is to give back; to your community, neighborhood, country etc. Sociability is a key aspect of our nature. We pretty much want to love, trust, socialize, talk and form bonds of various types with human beings. We exist in communities, in societies and our interaction with our fellow human beings is priceless. Teenagers have to learn the importance of social responsibility and develop community spirit from a young age. In other words, children need to learn to contribute to the various communities that they will find themselves in throughout their life; be they a school community, college community, sports team, neighborhood, workplace and so on. As the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote: ‘He that does good to others does good to himself’. In order to understand why, you need to learn to express gratitude and kindness as well.

According to the dictionary, kindness is the quality of being generous, considerate and friendly; but it is so much more than that. Kindness is being caring, compassionate and selfless. Kindness may be interpreted but also expressed differently by different people. Kindness can be expressed through, for example, empathy, thoughtfulness and acceptance. Kindness is like dominos. One small kind act can cause a ripple effect that impacts an entire social group. If we all try to be kind, we are creating a movement of change.

Gratitude can be thought of as a function of kindness. It is easier to be kind when you are grateful. If for example, you realize that you are in a better position than a lot, if not most, people on this planet, then it will be much easier, it will come more naturally to show kindness.

Therefore, the combination of kindness and gratitude will help you see the importance of giving back. A lot of athletes give back, but you can easily see two types: the ones who give back because they pretty much have to and because people expect them to and then you have those who clearly do this because they feel like doing it. The second category involves the people who usually go one step further in doing it and who show some imagination and creativity when doing it. They are proactive about it, to use a concept that we will discuss in a future lesson.

Being kind and giving back

There are various steps and things you can do to develop kindness and learn the value of giving back. A few examples include the following:

Cultivating the right pre-conditions:  In order to grow into socially responsible adults, you have to make sure that the right pre-conditions are there. You have to learn from your parent and for yourselves, to tell right from wrong, to be able to situate yourselves in an issue, to say thank you and please, to be kind to others and so on. Only then will you be able to learn that as members of society you have rights, but also duties and obligations; to work towards the common good and try to help other people, to respect the planet and the environment and work for the various communities you will be part of throughout your lives.

Developing awareness: The easiest and most practical way to learn is to notice things that are wrong and work to make them right. This can start at home with the small things. For example, a napkin that has fallen on the floor and needs to go to the garbage can, mopping water from the floor after you shower. Small daily acts like these will help you build awareness of your surroundings and try to do whatever you can, instead of waiting for others to do everything.

Donate: Your needs and wants change every few months during adolescence as you will soon notice. You will change video games, clothing and so on constantly which means that you will have a lot of things that you no longer need nor use. On the other hand, there are millions of children around the globe who do not have much. They can’t afford clothing, let alone play with their friends online, and rely on the help of other people to get some of those things. You can make a habit of once every year to go into your room and pick 1,2, 5 or 10 items you feel like you no longer need and to donate them.

Volunteer: There is a variety of things that you can volunteer for. Do something that you are invested in, not something that others told you to. There are plenty of things out there that need our attention such as poverty, homelessness, isolation, bullying and so on. That way, you will experience the beauty and satisfaction of giving back and being a socially responsible person, which is very fulfilling.

Action Steps – Exercise 2 (5 minutes)

In light of everything we discussed today, please list one thing that you will do in the next year to express gratitude, show kindness, or give back.

Lesson wrap-up

Our aim today was to discuss three different, but as you may have noticed, interrelated concepts/ values/ emotions: gratitude, kindness and giving back. We explored these three individually, but also together. We also explained how important they are and how they will help you in your life whether you become pro athletes or follow other career paths. Moreover, we listed some steps you can take that will help you develop these three values.

At this point we will wrap up today’s lesson.  First, we will go over the learning objectives of this lesson and we want your feedback as to whether they have been achieved and then we will address any questions you may have.  Please feel free to ask anything you’d like in relation to today’s lesson and we would love to hear how the concepts we discussed today relate to you and your life!