On a radio interview today, Roy Richards asked me what I considered to be the “magic ingredient” in happy marriages. My answer in a word? GRATITUDE.
Having a heart full of gratitude makes you happy. It makes you attractive. It makes you feel alive. So as an individual, you feel good when you feel grateful.
When you focus your attention on everything you can be grateful for in your marriage, you nourish your marriage. You smile more. You lighten up. You let minor irritations roll off your back if you even notice them at all.
Concentrating on gratitude in your marriage helps you see things you would’ve missed if you hadn’t been actively looking, and you start to notice that there’s more good going on in your marriage than you thought. Gratitude helps you want to spend more time with your spouse. It helps you have more positive conversations and experiences together. It contributes greatly to what’s called “positive sentiment override” – a concept I learned from John Gottman’s book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.
What “positive sentiment override” means is that you perceive that there are so many positive things going on in your marriage that when the “negative” things come up, they either roll off your back, you deal with them well, or at least you rebound quickly. In my opinion, that’s what “happily ever after” looks like in the real world.
But how to do you cultivate an attitude of gratitude? There are lots of ways. Play quick gratitude games, keep a gratitude journal, take pictures of things you’re grateful for and print them out, write “thank you” notes… Try a few things and find out what helps you feel most grateful.
To your marriage,
No Comments Yet