3 Good Things
Clickbaity, silver bullet self-help gimmicks collect the highest amount of skepticism. Titles like “One Quick Trick To Unlock A More Productive You,” “The One Thing Every CEO Does Before 8:00 am,” “Hack Your Finances With 3 Easy Tools,” or “5 Steps To Your Happiest Life Now,” make me cringe.
I typically treat the advice contained therein with even more disregard.
These strong feelings come from a lifetime of (wrongly) believing that my daily struggles could be fixed by that one thing I hadn’t thought of or the latest productivity tool or planner. Other folks were clearly living organized, well-planned lives, so “I just haven’t tried hard enough,” was my constant refrain.
It turns out that ADHD, depression, and anxiety do not generally evaporate with “one quick trick.”
There are now many people and tools that help me each day, none of them as quick and easy as the clickbait articles would suggest!
Enter: the topic of gratitude.
Gratitude is one of the primary frameworks through which I try to lead and live. However, when I first encountered the gratitude practice of ‘naming 3 good things for which you are grateful for’ (initially through a money-making Gratitude Journal at Barnes and Noble), I thought what I thought about most things like it: this is a silly product just out to make money.
You can imagine my surprise when I discovered (after many years of poo-pooing such journals) that the 3 Good Things practice makes a remarkable and lasting impact.
I was so mad! How could something as simple as noting 3 specific items of gratitude each evening before bed actually make a difference in one’s sense of happiness? But it does. You don’t need a fancy journal to do it (though if that’s helpful for you, go for it). You can use a pad of paper or a note on your phone, or you can text a friend with your list.
Studies show that just two weeks of this practice can continue to affect one’s sense of happiness for the following 6 months. Expressing gratitude for relationships and telling those people about your gratitude has an even greater effect.
It's not that everyone all of a sudden experiences a whole lot of good things, and it certainly does not dismiss the very real hard things that each one of us encounters. It simply trains our minds to also dwell on the good and not only the bad.
This is a helpful framework through which to understand scriptures that implore us to thank God in every circumstance. We are not thankful for the hard times in the moment we experience them, but we can remain thankful for the little good things amidst the challenge. This gratitude keeps us grounded and resilient as we navigate difficult seasons. As one psychologist put it, “The negative screams at you, but the positive only whispers” (Barbara Fredrickson).
I have incorporated the 3 Good Things practice into my own evening routine. For me, the practice is more effective (and consistent) when I tell someone else those 3 good things. Each evening a colleague and I exchange texts with our 3 good things. This is helpful for each of us because we can remind each other if we’ve forgotten an evening, or if our listed ‘things’ aren’t very specific.
3 Good Things, and many meditative and reflective practices like it, are powerful tools in our toolkit. So frustratingly simple!
This advent we’ll return to the simple, small practices that keep us grounded in an attempt to answer the question, “how does a weary world rejoice?”
Rev. Sarah Speed addresses this question with a poem of the same name. The last stanza reads:
How does a weary world rejoice?
I would guess
soul by soul
and day by day
but if you ask me,
I bed most of it counts.
All of it counts. Our weariness, our daily moments of joy, all of it in between. In our own response to the question “how does a weary world rejoice?” we’ll focus on a different rhythm for rejoicing each week:
December 1: We acknowledge our weariness
December 8: We find joy in connection
December 15: We allow ourselves to be amazed
December 22: We sing songs of hope
December 24: We make room
December 29: We root ourselves in ritual
January 5: We trust our belovedness
In the meantime, you might find a pal to send your 3 Good Things each evening, or maybe write a letter or two to the folks you’re most grateful for – even those who are no longer with us. The goodness of the world deserves to be recognized. It is how this weary world will find its voice to rejoice once more!
In gratitude,
Pastor Karyn
