Can You Curse During a Gratitude Meditation?

We’ve all heard about studies that show that counting our blessings or doing some kind of gratitude meditation will boost happiness. Some people dismiss the idea, however, with the assumption that you can only cultivate gratitude if you’re the pure, high-minded sort – that you have to ponder silently by a woodland stream, or sit lotus-style on your yoga mat, or at least keep a daily journal if you want to focus on gratitude.

“That kind of thing isn’t for me,” the thinking goes. “I’m too edgy, too irreverent, too ironic.”

But as this YouTube clip shows, gratitude meditations can come in a lot of flavors.

On Late Night with Conan O’Brien, comedian Louis CK’s commentary is edgy and irreverent – and it absolutely reminds us to be grateful of the things we take for granted in everyday life.

I can't embed the clip, Everything's amazing, nobody's happy, but go check it out. My favorite line, about getting a cell-phone connection, "Can you give it a second? It's going to space."

What he said must have resonated with people; Time reports that the video has been viewed more than a million times, which put it as March’s fourth most-viewed clip.

I find it challenging to practice gratitude, and I’m always looking for new ways to cultivate a grateful frame of mind. I loved the fact that watching Conan O’Brien did the trick today.

* One of my Secrets of Adulthood is “It’s okay to ask for help,” and I’m asking for your help. If you consider yourself a super-fan of The Happiness Project (I ask sheepishly), and would be willing to help me out in a few ways, I’d love to hear from you.

First item: before long, I’m going to launch my super-secret, super-fabulous, happiness-related website. I’ll send the super-fans the link ahead of time, in case they’d be interested in being beta testers (i.e., using the site in its early stages, to help work out the kinks before I make it public).

If you’re not interested in that sort of thing, there are some other issues that will come up in the next few months -- all purely voluntary, of course, so if you sign up as a super-fan but then don’t want to do anything, that’s perfectly fine.

If any kind souls would like to sign up, please just drop me an email at
gretchenrubin1[at]gmail[dot com]. (I added brackets to thwart spammers, but just use the usual email format.) No need to write anything more than “super-fan” in the subject line, and I’ll put your name on the list.