MadMong
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David DeSteno | Emotional Success (Episode 685)
David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and author of Emotional Success: The Power of Gratitude, Compassion, and Pride.
Because they’re not based in executive function, our prosocial emotions — gratitude, compassion, and pride — are immune to rationalization and bias. They can’t be tweaked to fit the desires of the moment. Whenever we feel gratitude, compassion, or pride, it will only push our values one way: toward the future. As a result, they can be trusted. Unlike reasoning, these emotions won’t work to subvert long-term goals by lulling us into a sense of complacency or expediency that we’ll come to regret later.
TLDR:
- Will power is quickly depleted, but our prosocial emotions become stronger the more we use them
- Developing prosocial emotions is a superior strategy for self control
- These emotions are Gratitude, Compassion, and Pride
- Our prosocial emotions evolved specifically to help us resist immediate temptations in favor of long term gains
- They can also be adapted to strengthen our bonds with our own future selves – who will benefit most from the grit we need to succeed in life
- Self control exists because for millennia what mattered for humans’ success was the ability to cooperate with other people
- Research has proven that being grateful lets you exercise greater self control
The spiritual discipline of gratitude is practiced not just because it feels good, but because it’s the right thing to do — not just for one’s own good, but for the good of one’s family, community, and society. The discipline of gratitude is in fact not a feeling at all, but a moral virtue.
The Spiritual Disciplines: Gratitude | The Art of Manliness
What if gratitude was really a discipline rather than a feeling, a moral virtue rather a mood enhancer? Read on about this sometimes forgotten discipline.
www.artofmanliness.com
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