happy thanksgiving welcome to developer t in today's episode i want to give you the tools to grow your gratitude this is very important to recognize because if you're like me you might feel guilty from time to time that your gratitude seems to be waning this is extremely normal our gratitude is subject to all of the other kinds of things that our attention is subject to in the first place because gratitude is an intent in other words you develop gratitude about things that you can remember that you can recall easily it's hard for example to be grateful for a birthday present that you got 15 years ago to the same degree that you're grateful for it today you may be grateful for the experience that you had back then how it has made you what you are today but we discount things over time we forget them it's easy to adapt to our current situation as well think about the things that you now think about the list that you probably had just two short years ago towards the end of 2020 the height of the covid pandemic just before the vaccines were going to be released what were you grateful for then interestingly our understanding of gratitude changes over time based on our circumstances this shouldn't be a surprise but practicing gratitude is about recognizing your current circumstances and trying to escape some of that adaptation to be grateful for the things that have become status quo to you in other words being grateful or practicing gratitude is not just about appreciating the things that are new that clearly command your gratitude but also recognizing the things that are consistent but this is hard and that's the point of this episode it's difficult to recognize how good certain things are in our lives so i want to take an exercise from a guest of the show julia galef julia joined us when she was releasing her book the scout mindset and in the scout mindset julia talks about the outsider test we're going to do a little version of the outsider test to help us grow our gratitude just a quick overview the outsider test asks what would somebody else do if they were to be a part of the outsider test what would somebody else do in my shoes given a difficult decision that you're making for example you can apply the outsider test by saying what would somebody like me right somebody who has equal intelligence or equal insight equal experience uh they're just not me what would they do in my shoes now what you're doing is you're setting aside a lot of the otherwise emotionally fraught parts of that question what would i do in my shoes well there's a lot of emotions involved but you put on an analytical hat you speak from a different perspective when you use the outsider test we can use a similar test a similar technique to shock us out of our adaptive thinking remember adaptive thinking is also partially responsible for imposter syndrome we talked about this years ago on an episode of developer t about the difference between the two and the difference between the two and the difference between the acceleration and momentum or acceleration and velocity when you are first starting out as a software engineer you have significant acceleration in other words you're improving at a pretty high clip this means that you're going faster than you did yesterday and you can feel that increase in speed that's because we can recognize a relative difference we can recognize a relative change in speed but we can't really recognize a consistent speed. If you're flying in a jet at 30,000 feet at nearly 700 miles an hour, you can sit calmly because that movement is not disturbing you in any particular way. There's no relative difference between you and all of your immediate surroundings. We tend to get imposter syndrome because we are used to the feeling of acceleration earlier in our careers, and we have not gotten used to the feeling of momentum or velocity. So this kind of adaptation is what we're trying to break into by using the outsider test to develop a stronger sense of gratitude. And gratitude is really just an expanded version of awareness. Awareness and gratitude have a significant overlap, and we'll see how that works in just a second. The exercise is very simple. Pick a person at random and imagine that they step into your shoes for a week or give it a month. Imagine that they suddenly own everything that you own. They suddenly have the family that you have or the friends that you have, the job that you have, the skills that you have. Imagine, first of all, how shocking that would feel. But then what are the things that they notice? What are the things that they appreciate, that they recognize as something worth having gratitude over? This might be an enormous amount of skill that you've developed as a software engineer. It might be the flexibility that you have in your career, or it might be the big problems that you get to solve at your job. It may be your relationship with your family. And yes, absolutely, it might be something that you own, a material possession. We don't want to leave those things out necessarily. But what would they notice? Now, recognize that this gets a little hairy because we're not talking about them losing all of their life or trying to adapt suddenly to a new life. Instead, imagine that they were given all of these things that you have or all of these situations that you have, and that they don't have anything lost from their life. Right? That's kind of the exercise because it can get a little bit conflated. And that's worth thinking about, right? Because each person does have something that they lose. For example, imagine that you are the outsider and you step into somebody else's life. This is another way to find things that you are grateful for. What would you miss? What would you wish that you didn't lose if it were suddenly gone? These two exercises, both of them, are going to help you to find the things that you are grateful for. They're not just outsider tests, but one where you are inviting an outsider to live your life and one where you are the outsider living somebody else's life. They can help identify areas that maybe you have not thought about. You've adapted to that area. Or maybe you live in a culture where those things that you could be grateful for are the status quo. Does that necessarily disqualify them from your list of things to be grateful for? It shouldn't. But developing gratitude and practicing gratitude is an exercise in and of itself. It's not something that necessarily comes naturally. It takes awareness of things that you may not have thought of in a long time. I challenge you to practice these two exercises and see how you feel on the other side. Is there something that you recognize that you don't need to be grateful for? Instead, you now have an opportunity to affirm to yourself and, if appropriate, to the people that you care about, your gratitude for them. I hope you enjoyed this episode, a rare episode that is relevant to the holiday. For those of you who practice Thanksgiving here in the States, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, however you are spending it. For those of you who don't, I encourage you to do so. Don't necessarily practice Thanksgiving. Turns out gratitude still works. And we don't necessarily need a holiday for that. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this discussion, I'd encourage you to join us on the Developer Tea Discord. I'd love to have you have these discussions. I'm very thankful, by the way. Very grateful for the people who are in that Discord community. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.