Black Friday

We rarely run sales, but this is Black Friday in America, so please enjoy a rare Two Percent Membership discount.

Post summary

• From now through Sunday, a Membership for Two Percent is 20% off because I want you to save money, have fun, and not die. Sign up below.

• This post will also quickly cover a few post-Thanksgiving thoughts on gratitude.

• Even though it’s Friday, full access to this post is free for all subscribers. Thanks for subscribing!

Housekeeping

• Get a Two Percent annual Membership for 20% off—from now until Sunday only.

• A Membership gets you the best, most practical health and wellness info and advice online. It can also save you money in the form of medical bills and time.

The post

We rarely run discounts on Two Percent Memberships, but it’s Black Friday and I’m grateful for you all—so Two Percent annual Memberships are on sale from now through Sunday.

Sign up now and get an annual Membership for 20% off.

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If you haven’t noticed, online health coverage is … how do I say this? … not ideal. It can misinform and mislead, ultimately wasting your time, money, and sanity.

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Ok, thanks for listening to my spiel as I try to build something that helps people.

I’m grateful for you all. Which brings me to my next topic …

Post-Thanksgiving thoughts on gratitude

Yesterday, I was thinking about gratitude: What it is and what builds it.

Gratitude is critical for mental health and happiness—I think it might be the number one quality of sound mental health today. But gratitude is not only hard to experience, it’s also a murky concept.

The best definitions I’ve seen explain gratitude as a recognition and appreciation for all the good things we have in life. Especially those we got thanks to no effort of our own. Gratitude lets us see our luck and how good we have it in the grand scheme of time and space.

But deep gratitude is really hard to experience. The psychological concept of the hedonic treadmill explains that humans adapt to their surroundings. Even truly miraculous things quickly become unappreciated.

And popular ways we often search for gratitude, like gratitude journaling, don’t hold up to research scrutiny.

So what actually works?

Try going without. Deprivation is a proven path that allows us to experience sweeping, profound gratitude.

Consider: The most mentally sound and happy I’ve ever been was when I returned from spending a month in the Arctic. I’d been living in a world of constant effort and discomfort.

Getting water took hiking to a stream and carrying heavy water bags back to camp. We were hungry the entire time because we had to carry in and ration all our food. I was never warm.

For most of human history, life was a grand, treacherous, and uncomfortable drama. But today, many of us live inside one big easy button.

Yet we don’t necessarily see that. I didn’t, anyway.

The hedonic treadmill, paired with the fact that people rarely go without anymore, I think, is a crucial reason mental health issues are so astoundingly high. It creates a sort of psychological fussiness where we fall apart if everything isn’t **perfect.**

Eventually, a crappy little Super Cub airplane landed on the Arctic tundra to transport me back to a modern world of ease.

When I got home, things I’d never paid attention to took on a miraculous quality.

Hot running water, ample food, a warm furnace, television, and much more—I experienced them all anew. The first time hot running water touched my hands, I broke out in an idiotic grin for 20 minutes.

Spending all that time in the Arctic, removed from modern conveniences, seemed to “reset” my hedonic treadmill. I was deeply grateful for how luckily I am to have been born today in a stable country. It changed me for good, altering how I saw my life and other people.

I couldn’t have had those “holy sh*t” moments of deep gratitude for modern life without removing myself from it.

My big takeaway is that occasional deprivation can make the ordinary feel extraordinary.

Research backs this idea, and it also makes historical sense.

Gratitude is in the texts of all major religions—it’s why religions have practices like Lent and Ramadan. We’ve even instituted a national holiday around being grateful: Thanksgiving, which we all celebrated yesterday.

So consider going without sometimes. For example, go backpacking for a handful of days—I guarantee your first hot shower will make you deeply appreciate hot running water. Go without certain foods, purchases, or experiences for a while. When you finally have them, they’ll be that much better. Spend more time outside when the weather isn’t perfect. Escaping into your home will make you grateful for your roof and furnace. Take a long trip and miss your family—so you can appreciate your family anew. Get creative and simplify, simplify, simplify, in the words of Thoreau.

Have fun, don’t die, in thanks,

-Michael