An Exercise in Gratitude

An Exercise in Gratitude

Overview:
Job seekers face many afflictive emotions, and to keep
focused on productive tasks and a healthy mindset in the throws of unemployment
is challenging.  In order to successfully
traverse the unemployment valley, they need to draw on power that will help
them reframe their situations, give them the energy, and right frame of mind to
move forward.  An Exercise in Gratitude
provides such a sanctuary - providing job seekers with the ability to draw
energy and frame their future activities to help them help themselves.

Materials:
None

Duration:
30 minutes

Optional:
Begin with silent meditation for 15-30 minutes.  Consider having relaxing music playing in the
background if it may be helpful.  As many
job seeking sessions are about networking, you may also consider placing a sign
outside the doors for late arrivals that says: 
"Please enter and find a seat quietly. 
Please respect the silence, and refrain from all talk with others.  Please silence your cell phones/or place them
on vibrate."

 

 

Method

 

Say: 
Today we
will do things a little different than we usually do.  The path to a meaningful job that has no
risks, is no path at all.  The first
thing I'm going to do is to test you. 
I'll read you a passage about an emotion and I want to see if you can
guess what emotion this passage it talking about.

Read: 
Whilst
many emotions and personality traits are important to well-being, there's
evidence that this particular emotion may be particularly important.  First, a longitudinal study showed that
people who had more of this quality of emotion coped better during life
transitions.  Specifically, people who
had more of this before the transition were less stressed, less depressed, and
more satisfied with their relationships 3 months later.  Second, 2 recent studies have suggested that
this emotion may have a unique relationship with well-being and may be able to
explain aspects of well-being that other emotions cannot.

Both studies showed that this emotion was better to explain well
being than 30 other personality traits. 

Ask: 
So, what
is this emotion?

Do:
Listen to guesses.  Repeat them back to the person saying them.

Say: 
It is
gratitude. 

Read: 
A large
body of recent work has suggested that people who are more grateful have higher
levels of well-being.  Grateful people
are happier, have less stress, are less depressed, less stressed, and are
happier with their lives and social relationships.  Grateful people also have higher levels of
control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and
self-acceptance.  Grateful people have
more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life,
being more likely to seek support from other people, be interpreted and grow
from the experience, and spend more time planning out how to deal with their
problem.  Grateful people also have less
negative coping strategies, being less likely to avoid the problem, deny that
there is a problem, blame themselves, or cope through substance abuse.  Grateful people sleep better, and this seems
to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts just before
going to sleep.

Say: 
That
comes from the world's largest source for information:  Wikipedia. 
So, you can see that there are many benefits that you gain personally
from being grateful. Gratitude is closely linked to appreciation.  Appreciation overlaps with thankfulness, and
expressing that appreciation of something that has happened.  Some sense of pleasure, well-being, joy,
safety, or support that has contributed to your needs or growth. 

Gratitude is, in a sense, a secondary emotion, meaning that
it has to come after something has occurred. 
There has to be an action by someone else that then leads to your
feeling of appreciation and gratitude. 

In our lives, there are a few people who make all the
difference.  Sometimes, they know.  Sometimes, they do not.  But you know. 
You know who these people are who have made a difference - the
difference - in your life.

Say
In today's exercise, we are going to give you a chance to
practice being grateful. We will give you a chance to step back, to reflect,
and to practice gratitude.  In doing so,
it will create a reinforcement that will help you to combat afflictive emotions
relating to job seeking and protect and empower you on your journey out of the
unemployment valley.

Say:
Make yourselves comfortable. 
If you can, find a spot where your vision will not be distracted.  It may be on the floor, on the wall, on the
ceiling.  If you wish, you may close your
eyes.

Pause (for a moment)

Say
Good.  Now I want you
to trace back over your life - from the time you were born to right now.  And as you fast forward over your life I want
you to slow down when you encounter someone who made a difference.  You fill find a situation that was a critical
turning point - where the advice, support, wisdom, or care mattered and made a
difference. 

Take a moment and reflect on the situation and the role that
the person of whom you are thinking helped you.

Pause for one minute.

Say
Continue fast-forwarding and think of others who have helped
you in a meaningful way.

Pause for one minute.

Say (quietly)
Finally, I want you to focus on your career and one person
who either helped you to get into the career, advance your career, or been
helpful in shaping your progress.  Take a
moment now and reflect on this person and how they have helped you.

Pause for one minute.

Say:
Now I want you to ease back out of your zone and come back
and focus on me.  I am going to ask you
to take a risk - not a big risk, but a risk. 
I'm going to ask you to pair up with a person near you and simply tell
them about one of the people who has made a difference to you.  If you are not comfortable sharing, you may
choose to sit quietly, but there is to be no floating, or eavesdropping on
others conversations. 

Each person in the pair will have 5 minutes to talk about
their person, and then we will switch and the other person will have 5 minutes.  Got it? 
It will get somewhat noisier here as everyone talks.  So, I'm going to ask you to talk quietly to
try to preserve the atmosphere.

Pause - answer any questions but quickly move on.

Do:
Have people team up in pairs.  Ensure that everyone who wants to be paired
up is.

Say
Ready, start.

Do
Continue tracking time. 
Announce when there are 2 minutes and 1 minute left.

Say
OK.  Now switch.  Person who was talking, now you are the
listener. Listener, you are the talker. 
Share your story about a person who has been helpful to you.

Say
Ready, start.

Do
Continue tracking time. 
Announce when there are 2 minutes and 1 minute left.

Say
Time's up.  Now settle
back into your seats and let's debrief.

Do
Allow folks to wrap up and settle back in.

Say
Now we're going to take a few minutes to share what happened,
what you thought and how this exercise was.

Do
Gather comments and listen to the impact this exercise had
on them.

Say
Those comments were great. 
You don't have to go back to the person and tell them how you are
grateful.  But some job seekers we've
done this with in the past have.  If you
want to, fine.  Do that.  If you don't, that's OK to.  The importance is the impact they have had on
you.  It's like a vaccination.  It will protect you in the future.

Gratitude is one of the protective forces for you to use
when you sense that you are getting discouraged or losing your path to getting
a job.  If you can develop a habit when
you wake or before you go to bed at night to think of the person or people to whom
you are grateful, it will change you.  In
doing so, it will change the way you engage with others.  It will change your DNA.  Try it and see.

 

Note:
This exercise was inspired by a podcast on Gratitude from Gil Fronsdal.