This is a game you can play any time, but it’s especially good to play it in a pandemic. What is the game you say? Here’s Siobhan O’Connor to explain in this piece, An Easy Way to Practice Gratitude | Forge. Key quote:
At our dinners, we sometimes played a game we called Five Nice Things. It is what it sounds like: You take turns naming things that are nice. Five is the number. It can be a thing that makes you happy, a compliment for the other person, a win at work, “This broccoli is tasty,” whatever. It’s a bit sappy, but it’s not the sappiest, and the rules were: Don’t overthink it, and be specific. We’d roll it out in other settings: group hangs, work, whatnot. It was, generally speaking, a hit. Even Eeyores can get into it if you bring to the game your Tigger energy. But it was most meaningful when it was just the two of us.
I think the way to make it easy to play is to avoid trying to find the five NICEST things. Five low key nice things are fine. For example five low key nice things for me are:
- Waking up in the morning and feeling good and energetic
- A bright sunny day after days of overcast skies
- Walking by a store with lots of tulips for sale in buckets on the sidewalk
- Buying a hot mocha on a cold winter day and sipping it as I walk
- Late at night, looking at a yard filled with new fallen snow and seeing how uniform it is and how it sparkles
Just thinking about them makes my brain feel better. I think once you come up with some, your brain will feel better too.
(Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash)
Smart People I Know 