A Musing About Gratitude

It seems to me, that in order to experience that wonderful feeling of gratitude we are told is the pinnacle of a successful life, we actually need to be in a receiving state. Which means when we have difficulty feeling grateful in a situation we need not judge ourselves as "bad" or "wrong", (which further pushes us away from good feeling) and instead see it as a signal that we are closed off to receiving in some way.

This perspective helps to eliminate the shame that can compound on top of whatever painful feelings we are already experiencing. It guides us to be curious about what ways we are needing nurturing and healing. Instead of trying to brute force ourselves to gratitude journal when we aren't feeling it, we can bring more attention to what we are feeling and see if we can move through it. 

Of course, reminding ourselves to count our blessings and find silvers linings in times of stress can still be helpful. It's just there are times when focusing on gratitude can make things feel worse, not better.  In fact, sometimes defaulting to gratitude journalling can be a form of spiritual bypassing, when what's needed is to go deeper into the pain first, before we can open up to the good feelings. 

I wrote the affirmation in this drawing partly in response to the trend in the wellness community of touting gratitude as the key to creating a life you love. So much so that there's more shame now around not feeling gratitude (and shame is a show stopper when it comes to learning.) Not to mention the spiritual bypassing that gets activated when one tries to force oneself to feel grateful when maybe the next step is to get sad, and go inward to heal. 

As always, this relates to that point I come back to time and again: for those of us in the metaphysics and philosophy space, we need to keep in mind that we are just guessing about what causes what. Yes, we all notice that people who feel happier or experience great abundance tend to feel gratitude more often. But immediately concluding that it's the gratitude causing the happiness/abundance is a bit premature. Why couldn't it be the happiness causing the gratitude? Or, more likely, something else entirely causing both?

​We have to be aware of what they call in statistics the "correlation vs. causation" concept, which says that just because two things are correlated doesn't mean that one is causing the other.  A third thing could be causing both.

So, just for fun, I wanted to look at gratitude, not as something to pressure ourselves to feel in order to have a good life. But as an indicator of whether we are in a receiving state. If we can't access the feeling, maybe there is something else we need to do before we can get into that state of receptivity and gratitude.

P.S.
Receiving takes practice, and requires us, not to shrink ourselves, but to expand our feelings of self worth and what is possible for us in life. Often this involves learning to move through uncomfortable feelings and becoming more present to our needs on a moment to moment basis. And this may require the assistance of a trained somatic healer. But don't discount simple solutions, such as calling a loved one, doing art, or going for a run or a walk in nature.