P4P: You'll be nostalgic for this year

Hey all,

Let's jump into today's episode about practising gratitude.

We long for the "good ole days" but never think we are in the good days. Your memory edits the past in one direction; it keeps the good and quietly drops the rest. Do the edit early and practice gratitude for the current season of your life that you'll look fondly back on.

This week I was reading a site called Ordinary Abundance, which walks you through a normal modern home showing that almost everything in it used to be a miracle. Music on demand, a fridge, a toilet indoors – all things that past generations were in awe of.

It got me thinking about how, when we reminisce about the past, we often reflect very positively. We long for the 'good ole days', when things were simpler or easier. But is that really true, or are we wearing rose coloured glasses?

This has been studied a couple of times by academics who found the positive memories tend to outlast the negative.

In 1997, a group of psychologists tracked people through three trips — a holiday in Europe, a Thanksgiving break, and a three-week bike ride through California. In all three events, the participants’ recollection of the event was more positive than the actual experience.

There's a second finding underneath it, called the fading affect bias. This shows that the emotional charge of bad memories drops off faster than the associated good ones.

What this tells us is that time doesn't just blur the past; our minds edit it in one direction. We leave most of the negatives behind and think only of the positives. Think back to that last holiday you had where you might have had some drama. Do you think about the terrible flight or the hotel that didn't look as good as the photos? Or do you reminisce fondly on the beautiful sights you saw and delicious food you ate? My guess is that for most of us, the positive far outweighs the negatives.

To sum, what's happening here is our minds unfairly compare the past's highlights package with the present's live feed.

And gratitude is the way to combat that, which leads us into this week's practice.

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Most gratitude practices ask what you're grateful for. There's no wrong answer, which is exactly why they stop working. You write "my health, my family" for the fourth week running, feel nothing, and decide gratitude doesn't work on you.

Change the question.

What will I miss about right now?

The studies show that you are going to look back fondly on this time in your life. So, every day ask yourself the question and borrow the positive bias for the now.

For me, I immediately think of the experimentation of this newsletter. Each week I'm slowly figuring it out and trying different things. And while it's difficult right now because I'm building from the ground up, it's a period of creativity and energy that I believe I'll look back fondly on.

For you, it could be anything; maybe it's the apartment that's a little too small but was also a space that you love because of the location or the lack of a backyard to tidy up.

Maybe it's to do with a friend who right now is only a 10-minute drive away to catch up. Only you know the answer.

So ask yourself the question every day next week and think about what are going to be the things you miss from this season of your life once it's finished.

One caveat. If you're having a genuinely rough year, sit this one out. The research on fading affect bias says the edit runs the other way when you're depressed, and being told you'll miss this is no help at all.

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Hit reply and tell me one thing you'll miss about right now. I'll read every one.

Tommy