The Power of Gratitude

Let me tell you a story about a study known in some circles as The Nun Study. The University of Kentucky conducted it to analyze the health habits of some seven hundred nuns from the School Sisters of Notre Dame, ranging in age from 75 to 107 (!!!), focusing on Alzheimer's disease. What made this study particularly interesting is that the researchers had access to their autobiographies written in their early twenties. Imagine reading something almost 50 years after you wrote it...in your twenties. I mean, yikes, at least from my perspective. 

I'm not going to go into the particular methods of the study. Still, they found that the earlier autobiographies expressed emotions like gratitude, hope, happiness, and love, the more likely it was that nuns would be alive some sixty years later. The correlation was so specific that researchers could predict with 85% accuracy which nuns would develop Alzheimer's. The difference between grateful and not so grateful was nearly six years. To quote Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: "Being grateful adds years to your life." There it is with hard data, and yet, I imagine many of you don't practice gratitude enough. 

I bring this up this week because Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and being grateful is primarily what this holiday is all about. Whether it's for your family or health or whatever happens to be on your mind this Thanksgiving, gratitude is what primarily brings us together in front of the mound of food, which will no doubt put in you a food coma. You're probably asking yourself, what does this have to do with working in a creative business? Well, honestly, everything. What drives so much angst and unhappiness in the industry is a lack of gratitude—Gratitude for what we have the privilege of doing every day. We get to bring stories to life and use our creative brains regularly. We get to constantly solve problems and innovate, something as any reader of this newsletter knows, I think we are currently lacking. This is not to say that there are not rough days and frustrating requests from filmmakers, clients, and bosses. But when you take the long view and think of some of the cool things you get to do and be a part of, the frustration begins to fade away. 

Gratitude can help you cope with stress, and it will dissipate other emotions like anger, jealously, and resentment, which are the drivers of so much of the dysfunction in today's industry. It can also provide you the opportunity to savor more positive experiences. But also, let's not forget, and perhaps, most notably: It enables you to live longer! I'll take that over any new age mud tasting shake they happen to be selling on Montana Avenue. So, as you enjoy your time with your family and friends this Thursday and prepare to return to work the following Monday, be filled with gratitude, and I can almost guarantee the gig will take on a whole new meaning. 

Hit or Misses

There will be no snarky Hits or Misses this week in the spirit of being grateful and not wanting to spoil anyone's holidays. But fear not, it shall return next week. 

Pages from the Commonplace Book

Since we've focused on the Revolutionary era in the last few newsletters, I thought I turn the page and shift to the Civil War era. Given that it's Thanksgiving week, I thought, what better time than to showcase Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving proclamation. Written in 1863 at the height of the Civil War, Lincoln's proclamation began a yearly tradition of presidential Thanksgiving proclamations and is considered the first of our modern-day Thanksgivings.

Washington, D.C.

October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

Get The Founder’s Brew weekly to your inbox. Subscribe here!