We Are Confused About How to Practice Gratitude

It does not mean we exclude or repress our feelings.

It’s taken me a while to understand how to practice gratitude.

The self-help gurus make practicing gratitude sound so easy, but it’s not. If it was, we would do it all the time and not get defensive when people say, “try to be grateful.”

I remember hearing that expression and bristling. But that’s because I didn't understand what gratitude really is. To me, gratitude felt like a silly, unrealistic, or impossible thing to do in the face of stress and hardship. But now I know better.

Without gratitude I wouldn't have risen up after my breakdown in 2011, I wouldn't have found a new path, new partner, or any of the good things I have in my life now. Gratitude is more than an expression of faith, it’s an act of personal service that creates new action and possibility.

Gratitude doesn’t mean we throw a veil on our real feelings about a situation and “just be grateful for what we have.” It also doesn’t mean that we forget our problems because we “should be grateful we don’t have it worse.”

This would be considered repression of our feelings, which throws us further into darkness rather than finding peace or harmony with our lives.

Contrary to what most people think, we can be grateful and feel pissed off, uncertain, sad, or fearful. Gratitude doesn’t preclude having a range of feelings, in fact, our raw feelings can actually enhance gratitude.

But gratitude can help us cope with our feelings rather than descending into a spiral of negativity.

However, there’s one thing we must have in order for gratitude to work well for us: Acceptance.

This is where we often get tripped up. If we can’t accept what’s happening in the present moment, we’ll likely not benefit much from gratitude. Actually, I’m not even sure gratitude is possible without acceptance.

Acceptance means we are not resisting what’s happening in the moment. We stay in the moment without resisting our feelings, the facts, or our responsibility.

To resist our situation means we refuse to believe it, to look at what’s real, and to…

Related posts:

While cholesterol is an actual molecule what it is bound to while it’s floating through your blood is what’s more important than just how much of it there is overall. In fact depending on what it’s…

If you work in industries such as manufacturing, inspection, or quality control, you may have heard of a telecentric lens. Telecentric lenses are a type of lens that has many benefits over…

I created a Mobile App development checklist not to repeat mistakes I made shipping Habit Tracking…. Here is my 5-point checklist for any new mobile App project:.