Here’s the thing… about gratitude.

It doesn’t work.

Gratitude is bad for you. Don’t believe me? Here’s why: It encourages harmful systematic thinking, invalidates your phenomenological experience, and prevents needed emotional processing.

Assuming I haven’t lost you yet, let me explain.

Our thought process is more reactive than we realize. We tend to have thoughts based on preconceived ideas and notions, also known as conditioned beliefs, which begin to take shape in early childhood. Your worldview was set up a long time ago. Example: Pluto is absolutely a planet. This is a hill I am willing to die on. I have made countless models of the heliocentric Milky Way Galaxy during my six-year tenure in elementary school (bad at spelling but good at painting little polystyrene foam balls). They all had Pluto as the NINTH and final planet in our solar system. This is a fact - immovable.

Life, as it turns out, is not fair. Never has been, never will be. Life is cruel and mean. So when it is mean to me that is my lived experience, my phenomenological interaction with things around me, and thoughts within. Gratitude in a cold world is nothing more than a lie we tell ourselves to create the illusion of warmth.

Finally, gratitude is simply a distraction preventing me from doing the hard work of emotional reflection and processing. “Oh I am grateful for this and for that.” We might say. When really we ought to be doing the hard work of self-examination. Diving into our uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and depression. Challenging ourselves to grow and to push for real change in our lives. Gratitude just makes you feel good about being somewhere you hate.

All arguments I found online from serious and silly sources.

Forced or Fake

Among other things, we have a problem with gratitude in our society. I have a gratitude problem as well. So why doesn’t it work? First, we need to look at what gratitude is and more importantly what it is not.

Obviously, we all know what gratitude is. We really don’t need to break out the dictionary here. It’s simple enough. Gratitude is the act of being thankful, expressing that thankfulness, and being ready to return kindness. Right. That’s it. Someone does something kind for me, I say thank you. I mind my manners. I am polite to others. I do my best to speak and act the way I would want people to speak and act towards me. I’m sure your mom taught you all this growing up as well.

But here’s the thing. Our society has grown to a point where we value the idea of being grateful rather than the act of being grateful. We no longer hope for the best service but we now demand the best. We believe we are always entitled to the best deal, the best experience, and the best price. We need same-day shipping and demand a refund immediately should there be a single issue with our order.

Owning a counseling firm, a vacation rental company and a few restaurants has shown me firsthand how rude, cruel, and demanding WE can be.

We have the same issue with self-care. We love to post photos to social media about the great deal we got on this lavish beach vacation. Self-care is not a spa day, it is the hard work of laboring in the field of the soul. The deep work necessary to challenge ourselves.

It is silly to think that we are so willing to trade real growth and self-development for a few tiny likes from strangers who live in a sea of digital anonymity. Stay with me here. It’s about to get good.

Gratitude is about being authentic, not forced. Gratitude is real, not fake. And when it is real it is good. When it is fake or forced it does no good and prevents the kindling of warmth your soul needs to glow.

Okay. Let me refine my opening statement. Gratitude does work. But only when it is real, organic, 100% all-natural.

Authentic Gratitude

Smarter people than me have said, “If you have a gratitude problem in your life it probably starts with you.” I love this sentiment. And I fully agree with the idea. I think gratitude is in fact good for us and does work but only when we are authentic and real about what we are grateful for and how that gratitude is expressed in our lives.

I can’t fact-check this but it seems to me social media is about 90% fake or forced gratitude. Spoiler, you CAN’T FAKE it. Forced gratitude simply does not work. Fake gratitude comes off as insincere and at times condescending. But genuine authentic gratitude is truly a beautiful thing.

Do you have a gratitude problem in your life? I know I do. I’m not doing it right. I’m forcing it. I keep hearing my father’s voice, “If it doesn’t fit, don’t force it.” Why? Why do I try so hard to force this feeling when it is not real? To be clear, I have a great deal to be grateful for, and I do my best to express that gratitude appropriately. However, I find that at times, I force gratitude in situations when I am not feeling grateful but rather struggling with anger, sadness, envy, or pain.

Do you share in this struggle? Do you deny yourself the opportunity to get into the real work? Or do you mask those feelings by forcing out this incongruent compound known as gratitude?

Gratitude is a good thing when we embrace it authentically. And a dangerous tool when used to deny the liberty of the need for our deeper emotions to mingle with the complexity of life.

Self-reflection, I think I’ll start there. I’m going to spend some time reflecting on what I am actually grateful for and note those thoughts in my journal.

Examination of forced gratitude. I’ll go there next. I want to excavate the emotions I feel when I am forcing gratitude. There is something down there I seem to want to avoid.

Re-orientation of gratitude expression. Watches, cars, and even the soul need to be recalibrated from time to time. My hope is that after this reflection and examination, I will be able to adjust my approach to gratitude, allowing me to express my love for those around me in deeper and more meaningful ways.

Feel free to join me if you like. Your thoughts are most welcome. As always, take what you like, leave the rest.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these thoughts for your self-examination. See you next week.

-CT

P.S. Check out the podcast if you like to listen.