#42 The Gratitude Lie

A few weeks ago, a friend mentioned finding it hard to be grateful. It made me think about my own relationship with gratitude. What exactly is gratitude, and what qualifies as being grateful? These questions lingered in my mind, and I just couldn’t find the right words or answers for weeks.

And then, finally, this week, I understood what gratitude means to me, and maybe it could mean the same for you, too.

One More Answer Found At The Beach

The Gratitude Lie

From my observation, the more people talk about gratitude, the less grateful they are.

Fueled by social media influencers, the practice of gratitude has become trendy within the well-being industry, promising to replace sadness with happiness.

It’s a lie. And they know it.

Much of the chatter around gratitude appears to be just another marketing strategy and an easy way to create content.

But also provides narratives for funny videos on YouTube:

Real Life Shows the Concept of Gratitude Is Complex

Simply stating or writing down things you are grateful for will not necessarily improve your life; in fact, it might even worsen it or create a disconnection from reality and your actual situation.

Because gratitude is a skill linked to emotional maturity.

Studies suggest that well-being is more closely tied to the ability to understand, manage, and express one´s emotions than to the act of writing down things you are grateful for.

Gratitude involves a sense of humility, thankfulness, and the ability to recognize the positive aspects of your life, especially in challenging times.

Emotional maturity involves handling all emotions.

And maybe it means handling the negative ones especially well.

Gratitude Was Never Crucial For Survival - Negativity Bias Was

In our brains, there exists something called “negativity bias.” In simple terms, negativity bias describes our tendency where negative experiences have a greater impact on one’s mental state than natural or positive ones, even when they are equally intense.

It was more important for our ancestors to recognize the tiger that wanted to eat them first before thinking about how grateful they were for sunshine. And even today, babies rely on this bias to quickly learn to stay away from things that can hurt them.

We are hardwired to focus on negative things.

The challenge for modern humans is to avoid being dragged into a negativity spiral, preventing negativity from consuming us.

The Antidote To Negativity

Spoiler alert: It is not gratitude.

To avoid negativity consuming us, we can not simply overlay positive thoughts onto negative ones and expect balance. The only way to address negativity is to disengage when possible and develop resilience for situations where disengagement isn’t an option.

The true antidote to negativity is transformation.

To change a situation, you must first understand why you're fixating on the negative, why you're upset, or why you're frustrated. This requires self-awareness and resilience to approach conflicts and challenges with thoughtfulness.

Recognizing negativity for what it is and finding a way to step out of it will ultimately lead to the emotion of gratitude.

Gratitude is NOT The Answer To A Bad Day

If you're having a bad day, accept it for what it is. Focus on getting through it without major damage, head home, go to bed, and get some rest. Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow brings a fresh start.

If your boss forgets an important meeting and you have to stay longer, it's fine to simply get the job done and head home. And if you do it without calling your boss an asshole, consider it a victory.

When you find yourself on your knees cleaning the floor at 11 pm because your child threw up, it's perfectly okay not to feel intense gratitude for the gift of motherhood in that moment. You can still be an amazing mom, even if there are times when you don't particularly like your kids.

A single bad day doesn’t create a bad life, and a day without feeling particularly grateful doesn’t make you an ungrateful person.

Fake Gratitude is NOT The Answer To A Bad Week

If you're experiencing several consecutive bad days, it might be time to think deeply about the root cause behind the negativity.

There's likely a reason why you're feeling angry and frustrated instead of grateful.

If a specific aspect of your life has been making you unhappy for an extended period, it's crucial to confront and address it. Ignoring it will only lead to the problem growing until it can no longer be ignored.

"Faking" gratitude will only serve to overlook the issue until it becomes too big to ignore; at that point, it’s called a crisis.

What Gratitude Means To Me

Gratitude, to me, is knowing that I am precisely where I want to be at this moment. This doesn’t mean that everything is perfect or that I´ll still have this feeling in an hour. It simply means that, right now, things feel right, and I don’t assume or expect it’ll stay this way.

And this is the exact feeling I had this week when I was standing on the beach.

The ability to be on the beach on a Friday morning and feel happy is a conscious choice.

It´s my way of practicing gratitude.

Like you, I have worries and bills to pay, worked jobs I didn’t like, and had relationships that didn’t work.

However, by confronting myself with the things that make me uncomfortable, I can find comfort in myself.

True gratitude is a result of personal growth.