As I’ve written about Raging Expat Syndrome in previous weeks (part 1 here, part 2 here), I’ve realized that, more than tips or tricks or intellectual understanding, living in harmony with your host culture is more a matter of character and disposition than it is of intellectual understanding. Of course, understanding cultural comparisons and cultural anthropology can help, but no amount of tips or tricks or theory will matter if someone is an arrogant and ungrateful jerk who can never be pleased and who gets ticked off no matter where they are. On the other hand, imagine a friend who is deeply humble and exudes thankfulness, then place that person in a cross-cultural environment. Even without any training in cross-cultural living, they’ll likely thrive and form meaningful relationships. Intellectual knowledge is not enough if character is lacking.
I initially planned to write this week about some language learning tricks, but I decided, given the US American Holiday this week, Thanksgiving, to instead write about cultivating gratitude as an expat. I know of nothing more powerful that will soften your frustration or fuel your enjoyment of a foreign culture than gratitude. In today’s tip, I want to share with you a few reasons why gratitude will help you, especially as an expat, and then a few suggestions on how you can make it a part of your daily routine.
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Why Practicing Gratitude Will Help You
An immense amount of scientific research demonstrates the tremendous benefits that practicing gratitude has: reducing depression, lessening anxiety, lowering inflammation and blood pressure, improving sleep, and more. Research at Berkeley even found that counseling and writing just one letter of gratitude only once a week had a greater benefit to mental health than just counseling.
In fact, gratitude has such demonstrated benefits that the Mayo Clinic has started a monthlong Discover Gratitude program to help patients and society at large have better health through gratitude—and it’s free, if you want to [sign up]((https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/wellness/gratitude).
Rather than rehash all of that data—just search “benefits of gratitude” if you’re interested, or read this Forbes overview—I’d instead like to reflect on the benefits that practicing gratitude can have for expats.
Gratitude helps you balance your cultural experience
A few months ago I was talking with a friend who lives in a horribly polluted city—like, seriously bad, with air quality 10–30 times higher than WHO recommendations. It’s daily a frustration to him and he blurted out to me, “It’s a [expletive] gas chamber.” He’s not wrong; higher air pollution does lead directly to more deaths. While our situation may not be that extreme, I think it’s safe to say that every expat faces things in their host culture that are decidedly worse than in their home culture. No culture is perfectly good, after all.
What do you do when you face something in your host culture that is worse than your home culture? Well, you could complain—and based on my expat friends, that seems the default choice of humanity—and yet, does complaining change the situation? Does it lead to more joy? Does it make you happier? It’s obvious that it doesn’t.
So, rather than complain about what is bad (and which you probably can’t change), why not intentionally be grateful for the good things that you enjoy in your host culture? There are many—no culture is perfectly bad, after all—and especially in times when you’re prone to complain, it’s important to intentionally call those good things to mind.1 This doesn’t mean you ignore the bad, but it helps ensure that you’re not ignoring the good…which kind of necessarily happens when you’re complaining about the bad. Balancing your experience—the good and bad—is crucial to thriving as an expat.2
Gratitude reduces stress
Living amidst a culture different than yours has a lot of inherent stresses. Gratitude reduces stress, anxiety, and depression, lowers blood pressure, improves your sleep, and counters the feelings of being overwhelmed and helpless. An expat needs the physical benefits that come from gratitude more, not less, than people living in their own culture. I’m not a medical expert, but consider reading about the health benefits of gratitude outlined by the Cleveland Clinic, UCLA Health, the Mayo Clinic, and even the US Center for Disease Control.
Gratitude enables relationships
You don’t want to be friends with someone who constantly complains—so why would others want to be friends with you if you’re constantly complaining? On the other hand, people who are deeply grateful—not a kind of Pollyana nothing-is-wrong, but people who appreciate others around them, who take the time to notice what others have done and thank them for it, who take joy in small things in life and are quick to smile—those kinds of people are deeply attractive to us. Those people bring us joy and are life-giving. As an expat, you both need those people to be your friends and to be that kind of person to your friends.
Even deeper, if you’re someone who is constantly frustrated by and with your local culture, your ability to make authentic, deep relationships with locals will be hampered by your criticism. You may find people who share the same frustrations as you, of course—no one is perfectly happy with their home culture—but your friendship pool is dramatically narrowed if only those people can be your friends. Learning to practice gratitude about your host culture—not a forced, polite saying, but an actual, heartfelt, deep appreciation for the good you see in your host culture—enables you to have meaningful relationships with locals.
Gratitude reshapes what you notice
What you think about changes what you unconsciously see. Last year my family bought a van and so we were facing the difficult choice of which van to get. While we were deciding, I saw vans all over the place, constantly identifying different makes, models, features, etc. After we bought our van, I stopped noticing the vans around us. Why? They didn’t go away—just like they weren’t invisible before we bought our van—but because I wasn’t thinking about them, I didn’t pay attention to them.
Gratitude is not some mere trick to reflect on the day and figure out the least-bad things that happened and pretend you’re grateful for them. Instead, practicing gratitude actually changes what you observe throughout the day, leading you to see more things for which you’re grateful than you would if you weren’t thinking about gratitude. Even as I write this, I’m noticing the blue sky and brilliant clouds, the tasteful Christmas music in the background, and the flavor of my Starbucks drink. Those things were all there—beautiful things for which I am grateful—but which I didn’t notice until I actively brought gratitude to mind.
Practical tips for practicing gratitude
There’s a reason why I’ve used throughout this article the phrase practicing gratitude rather than being thankful or some other term. This is intentional, because if you wait to experience a spontaneous overflow of thankfulness, it likely won’t happen with any regularly—and it is the regular, habitual practice that has been shown to have the greatest benefit. Instead, practicing gratitude is a choice that you make, a habit that you develop, a discipline in which you engage.
I’m not the world’s best at practicing gratitude—I’ve started and stopped the practice more times than I care to admit—but here’s a few suggestions for you based on my experience and what I’ve read.
- Start a gratitude journal. First, start a gratitude journal. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy—it could even just be in the Notes app on your phone—but the practice of writing down your gratitude has greater power than merely thinking about it. As I detailed in my tip about language notebooks, writing something by hand has a greater impact on memory than typing…and even typing is better than just thinking about something.
- Commit to a habit that you can accomplish in 2 minutes or less. Don’t say you’ll be grateful for 10 things a day. Instead, commit to writing down one thing each day for which you’re grateful. Make sure it’s easy to do, and let the habit grow. You can learn more about why you want to start with a 2 minute habit in the highly recommended book Atomic Habits. I made this one of my 2024 goals: each day to journal for 2 minutes about things that happened that day for which I’m grateful. By making it so “easy” to do–it just takes 2 minutes–I’m far more likely to do it than if I said “10 minutes.”
- Be specific. Rather than writing “I’m grateful for my husband”, write down “I’m grateful that my husband wakes up early every day to work, even when he doesn’t want to.” Instead of “I’m thankful for our house”, write “I’m thankful for a comfortable house that keeps me warm, dry, and safe.”
- Think of people more than stuff. Things are nice and you should be grateful for them—but people bring far greater meaning and joy to you than things (at least they do, if you recognize it!). Don’t think this is true? Consider what your life would be like if they weren’t there. Watch It’s a Wonderful Life and remember the impact that people have on your life.
- If you need some help, search online for some writing prompts. There’s many out there. One that I like to use which many people don’t think of is the words written 2,000 years ago by a man named Paul: whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (the Bible, Philippians 4:8, ESV).3
- Express your gratitude. Tell your spouse daily what you appreciate about them or what they did for which you are grateful.4 Tell your kids something each day that you appreciate about them. One way my family does this is, at the dinner table each night, each person shares a “yay” about their day (something they liked or enjoyed), a “yuck” about their day (something they didn’t like or enjoy), and something a person did that day for which they’re grateful. Writing a gratitude note is also a great exercise.
If you want more ideas about how to practice gratitude, Positive Psychology has written about 13 gratitude exercises which may interest you. You may also consider Mayo Clinic’s free Discover Gratitude program. I don’t know if it’s good or not (I just signed up), but it’s free and it’s Mayo Clinic.
Conclusion
The benefits of gratitude to you as an expat are so great that you would be wise to begin the practice in your life. Not only does it benefit you physically, emotionally, and relationally, but it also develops in you the character trait which you admire in others. Start becoming the person of gratitude that you aspire to be and watch the overflow of benefits in your life and in the lives of those around you.
For my US American friends, this Thanksgiving, instead of dropping off into naps, football, and games after a big meal, consider taking some time as a family to express to each person in your family something about them for which you are grateful. Start a new tradition in your family of gratitude. After all, that’s what the holiday is all about—giving thanks for the blessings in your life.
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Footnotes
1. This applies to far more than cultures, by the way. When you’re frustrated with your wife, kids, neighbors, or business associates, it’s easy to reduce them to the sum total of their failures. Intentionally practicing gratitude helps you “balance the scales” to remember the good of others.
2. We do these with our kids each night, asking them to name something good and something bad. There’s always good and there’s always bad; ignoring either has consequences.
3. Interestingly, Saint Paul wrote these words in the context of two people—Euodia and Syntyche—who couldn’t get along with each other (Phil 4:2). If they practiced gratitude about each other using this prompt, their disagreement surely would be reduced!
4. “Appreciate Daily” is actually one of the four habits in the wonderful little book The 4 Habits of Joy-Filled Marriages.
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