Over the last couple of years of practising mindfulness I have become particularly attuned to how subtle things and experiences shape my sense of well-being. Working from home means I get plenty of sleep, eat a freshly cooked, healthy breakfast and avoid public transport in peak hours. In the summer, I have breakfast on my balcony, savouring a cup of coffee and reading a paper, left over from the weekend. Sometimes I would go to yoga at lunchtime and stretch with a teacher, whose classes make my body and soul sing. I get my vegetables delivered and I unpack the box with a sense of curiosity characteristic of children.

Strangers and friends have been helping me with their time and advice, inspiring me and gently pushing me to make the most of my talents. My goddaughter has been a bundle of joy, always making me laugh and appreciate our special relationship. I have stopped blaming post viral fatigue for wrecking my life. Instead, I have come to think of it as an important life event, which made me discover myself and look at what I have with gratitude.

Gratitude has become a bit of a buzzword and with good reason. Too many tragedies happened in the world this year, broadcasting the message: "Life is too short - make the most of it." At the same time, ebola sufferers and desperate refugees surely must help us realise how fortunate we are to have health and homes. In the age where everything - fashion, headlines, new technologies - move so fast, people are beginning to notice the wear and tear. Mental health problems are on the rise. We are too anxious, busy and stressed out to notice how beautiful the world is, unless it's been posted on Instagram. Health and well-being gurus encourage us to practise gratitude to raise self-awareness and happiness.

The gratitude effect has been scientifically proven to enhance well-being. It encourages us to "count our blessings" we tend to forget, once we get used to them. "Everyone has something to be happy about. Perhaps they have a loving partner, good health, great kids, a satisfying job, close friends, interesting hobbies, caring parents, a roof over their heads, clean water to drink, a signed Billy Joel album, or enough food to eat," writes Professor Richard Wiseman in his book 59 Seconds. "However, as time passes, they get used to what they have and, just like the smell of fresh bread, these wonderful assets vanish from their mind."

Psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCollough conducted an experiment, investigating gratitude and subjective well-being (2003). Three groups of people were asked to spend a few moments each week writing. The first group listed  five things for which they were grateful, the second noted down five things that annoyed them and the final group jotted down five events that had taken place during the previous week. The 'gratitude' group remarked on seeing the sunset or on the generosity of their friends. The 'annoyed' group wrote about bills and arguments. The 'events' group detailed making breakfast and driving to work. The results were startling. Compared to those in either the 'annoyed' or 'events' groups, those expressing gratitude ended up happier, much more optimistic about the future, physically healthier and even exercised significantly more. 

Similarly, research by Seligman, Steen, Park and Peterson (2005) suggests that writing a gratitude diary every day for a week makes one happier and more resilient with the effects which may persist for months. 

I was intrigued by this and began writing my own gratutude diary in May. Every day I wrote down three simple things I was grateful for: sunny spells, a good chat with a friend and finding time to meditate. I have not been perfectly consistent over the last six months, but flicking through my diary now makes me smile. The last six months have been kind to me, and I am grateful. I could be healthier, fitter and luckier, but, in truth, I've had a wonderful year with so much to be proud of and pleased about. Writing the blessings down is simple, and the effects are surprisingly powerful. 

If a gratitude diary isn't your thing, how about some Christmas cards? It's the season to be grateful.

The Shrink and the Sage in the FT Weekend made me think about the effect of the environment we live in on our lives. As usual, the resident psychologist and the philosopher did not commit to an answer, doodling around the question but provoking plenty of thoughts. I suppose, that’s the point. I too could probably deliberate this way and that, but right now I happen to think pretty strongly that we are greatly conditioned by the environment we live in.
 
Just this week I was flying with Ryanair and was sitting next to an older couple returning from a holiday. If you fly with Ryanair, you know how obsessed they are with being on time. When they land, they play a jovial tune to celebrate their punctuality and encourage passengers to applaud their service. This time, however, we were late. It was no secret since we took off 30 minutes after the scheduled departure, and the crew made an announcement just before landing, apologising for the tardiness on that occasion. Yet when we landed, the old man next to me trumpeted the tune, just like he must have been conditioned to do by previous Ryanair flights. He heard the announcement, he knew we were late but he could not help himself: “Tu-tu-tu-toooo!”
 
A deeper way to illustrate my point is to look at Russia. In his brilliantly written and meticulously researched book, The Invention of Russia, The Economist’s head of Moscow bureau, Arkady Ostrovsky describes the process of ideological warfare carried out by Russia's president Putin. In December 2011, tens of thousands of Muscovites took to the streets to protest against the rigged parliamentary elections. At that time Putin’s rating started to slide. The president was angry at the people who owed him for cleaning up the mess of 1990s and improving the standard of living. Thanks to Putin, Russian middle class of the 21st century could enjoy consumerism just like their Western counterparts: wear H&M and Zara, go on holiday to Spain and buy Jamie Oliver’s cook books. All of a sudden these well-to-do people were catching up with anti-corruption activists, became interested in politics and raised their concerns about Russia looking increasingly like a one-party nation again. 
 
Kremlin turned to the ideology. “Putin countered the idea of Russia as a modern, European-style nation-state by inciting traditional values of the state and the church. By prosecuting Pussy Riot, the young women punk singers who performed obscenely in front of the altar of Russia’a main cathedral, banning the promotion of homosexuality and barring the adoption of Russian children by American couples, the Kremlin was able to present the liberals, who protested against all this, as a bunch of homosexual, blasphemous mercenaries ready to sell Russian children,” writes Ostrovsky. “He turned to anti-Americanism as the only ideological tenet that had survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia no longer aspired to be like the West, or sought its approval and recognition. Instead, it trumpeted its difference.”
 
I grew up in Russia and never encountered homophobia while I lived there. We talked about gays openly with my contemporaries at school. Now the same contemporaries express very different views on social media. “Homosexuality is not normal,” they say, “it’s unnatural. Gay people need hormonal therapy.” I can only imagine that in the last few years people living in Russia have been conditioned towards such views by the state-controlled media. 
 
“Propaganda feeds not so much on ignorance, but on resentment - a mixture of jealousy and hostility. Having an imagined but mighty enemy, America, makes people feel noble and good; it compensates for personal weaknesses and failures, and frees them from the need to justify themselves to anyone and above all to themselves.” 
 
“Russia is running the risk of overdosing on hatred and aggression,” writes Ostrovsky. Of course, the Western media and their consumers are guilty of environmental conditioning as well. Here too often “Putin”, “Russia” and “Russians” are piled up and packaged as one dish, sprinkled with xenophobia and aggression. The problem is that we live in the environment of headlines and Twitter messages, when hardly anyone has time for a ‘long read.’ As a result, we end up shouting at strangers on social media, signing petitions we have not researched to understand and piling up onto any bandwagon we come across. If you are not guilty of that, pat yourself on the back for your superhuman resilience. The rest of us need to become less impulsive and more reflective before we drown in the whirlpool of our own creation.