Stop Forcing Gratitude
Photo by Rosie Kerr
In the ‘self help’ world we are constantly told that practicing more gratitude will solve all our problems.
“Just list out what you’re grateful for each morning and night. Watch how your life transforms.”
Most of us want to be grateful all the time, yes.
Gratitude feels amazing.
But sometimes it feels like pulling teeth when what we are actually feeling is frustrated or overwhelmed or afraid—the furthest thing from grateful.
The act of listing out what we’re grateful for when we don’t feel grateful, can have a net negative effect.
The intention of this practice is to revel in the magic of appreciation, creating a net positive effect of increased positive emotion. And out of that positive emotion we create inspired behavior that whisks us off to make our dreams a reality.
However, when this practice feels forced and contrived, as opposed to natural and easy, we begin to unintentionally add a layer of guilt on top of our already present frustration.
Instead of increasing our positive emotion, we have now begun to increase our negative emotion.
We shame ourselves, “Why can’t I be more grateful? I have so much to be grateful for. Something’s wrong with me.”
At this point we spiral off into a self critical monologue, speaking to ourselves harshly.
This is never healthy.
At the end of the day, there is a time and space for practicing gratitude.
Or rather, there is an appropriate emotional place for practicing gratitude— and it is only ever when positive emotion is already readily available to us.
Practicing gratitude should be reserved for when it does feel natural and easy. While in that place, run with your gratitude as far as you can.
But what do we do when positive emotion isn’t available? What do we do when we’d like to shift into a more positive place, without the spiral of shame and guilt?
When positive emotion isn’t present, there’s a reason! Our emotions are simply information—not personal. Our job is to find that reason, and pay close attention.
Our job isn’t to judge whatever emotion we’re feeling, it’s to actually feel it.
Our job isn’t to change or escape whatever we’re feeling to make it more positive, it’s to actually feel it.
Our biggest problem is believing we should feel positive and grateful all. the. time.
That’s not how it works. We are human. And humans have both positive and negative emotions. There is no cheating the system.
The reason we attempt to cheat the system is because we believe our emotions hold moral value—meaning our positive emotion equals worthiness, our negative emotion equals shameful.
This just isn’t true.
The way we are feeling in any given moment does not reveal our true worthiness from the depths of our soul.
We can relax knowing we are 100% worthy in every moment.
When negative emotion is present, it is possible to shift into a more positive place without guilt and shame.
In order to do this we must first allow and accept whatever it is we are feeling.
We must get curious and kind with our emotion, not bitter and severe. This is easy to do with positive emotion and harder to do with our negative emotion because we fear our negative emotion.
There’s nothing to be afraid of.
Notice how this emotion feels in your body. Name the emotion. LOVE the emotion. Thank the emotion.
Say, “Negative emotion, you can stay here as long as it takes for me to understand what you are trying to teach me.”
When we respond this way, we become unstoppable.
Harnessing the power and energy behind our emotions takes skill and practice.
But once we have it under our control, we no longer feel like victims to the world.
We finally recognize that we are powerful creators.
And then the fun can begin.
