|
On day one of my self-proclaimed Month of Gratitude，my five-year-old son woke up bored at 5:15 a.m.，I spied a speeding ticket in my wifes purse，and our water heater spluttered to its death as I was getting into the shower. Ordinarily，I would have started complaining and the day wouldve been off to an ugly start. But this day was different. How cute my childs dimples are. How fetching my wifes taste for adventure. Only 29 days to go. Just a week earlier，as I struggled with the feeling that Id been put on this earth to load and unload the dishwasher，Id decided it was time to end my reflexive complaining. But it wasnt simply the little things that were annoying me. All of a sudden，my friends were dealing with bad news--cancer diagnoses，divorce，job loss. Shouldnt I be celebrating my relative good fortune? Id heard about the feel-good benefits of a gratitude attitude. Hoping for tips,I called professor Emmons，who pioneered research on the benefits of positive thinking. Emmons quoted new studies that indicated that even pretending to be thankful raises levels of the chemicals associated with pleasure and contentment. He recommended keeping a log of everything Im grateful for in a given week or month. I followed his suggestions，but my first attempts at keeping a gratitude list were pretty weak: coffee，naps，caffeine in general. As my list grew，I found more uplift: freshly picked blueberries;the Beatles White Album;that Im not bald. | 
