Gratitude is a funny thing. It’s a terribly helpful corrective to our human tendency to see problems. It has the ability to get us out of a difficult headspace, or shift our perspective when we are feeling like nothing is going our way. Gratitude can move our attention from what’s missing to what’s present, interrupt negative thought spirals and help us recover faster from setbacks. It can deepen relationships and quiet anxiety by reminding us what’s steady and dependable. It can even improve physical health, lower stress, and encourage humility by reminding us how much we rely on others.
For all these reasons and more, we are often told to be grateful. This is usually not so beneficial. No one likes being told what to do, even when the advice is helpful. My daughter really likes her room being clean, but hates when I tell her to clean her room. I like doing nice things for my wife, but I don’t particularly like being told I must do nice things for her. As humans, we often push back when demands are made of us. Practicing gratitude can be a key unlock in life, but we resist being told to feel a certain way.
There’s a powerful difference between feeling grateful and being told (or obligated) to express gratitude. In many social settings, the “right” thing to do is to express gratitude, but when gratitude becomes performative compliance—something we owe others to appear virtuous—it loses authenticity, and we can be left feeling resentful. Expressing it is an unwelcome imposition.
Pushback on gratitude can also stem from the reality that it has become something of a brand. When we scroll through #gratitude posts, we often see beautiful breakfasts, vacations, and gym selfies—moments curated for admiration rather than reflection. Real appreciation of what we have is a profound experience, but public performance of gratitude flattens its meaning, turning it from a humbling acknowledgement of how dependent we are on others to social signaling. #Grateful for my vacation might more truthfully be #gloating about my vacation– but #gloating does not have the same social cachet or plausible deniability. Conflating the two gives actual gratitude a bad rap, and ironically, pushes people away from a profoundly useful practice.
Brand gratitude shows up in challenges and thirty-day gratitude lists. While these can sometimes be helpful, they also risk turning gratitude into a checkbox on our personal growth routine– perfectorily performed but not really felt. Gratitude becomes transformed into something to optimize, disseminate, and broadcast, not experienced. It’s a commodification of appreciation.
Gratitude is sometimes used as a way of emotionally bypassing difficulty. Pain, loss, and frustration are all part of being human. Focusing on gratitude in the midst of our suffering can be a useful re-frame, and a helpful grounding technique to retain perspective. It can also be used to erase discomfort instead of acknowledging it. Rather than just sitting with the fact that life is sometimes difficult, we gratitude can be a distraction from it. This most often comes up when, in the face of pain, we say things like, “At least I still have a house, I should be grateful.” In a similar vein, when others use gratitude as a re-direction from our suffering (“At least be grateful you can ____”), it can feel like our suffering is invalidated because there are still things we have not lost.
Despite the fact that gratitude can be twisted into a bypass for dealing with difficulty, a brand, a checkbox or an injunction, it shows up in these ways in part because the core practice of it is helpful and powerful. Like any skill, developing it requires repetition, and we do need reminders and nudges to actually embrace it. It grows through deliberate attention—through small, consistent acts of noticing what sustains us, and most of us need help in remembering to give it that attention.
One way of thinking about it is as a discipline of attention, of putting our attention on what we have, rather than what is missing. Where our attention goes, our emotional life follows. Given that our brains are wired to pay attention to problems, to what’s not working, gratitude is an important corrective. Gratitude trains us to aim our attention at the full picture—not only the problems but also the supports that hold us up.
There is a deep irony that Thanksgiving is immediately followed by Black Friday. The shift from reflection to consumption mirrors how our culture struggles to sustain gratitude beyond a single day. Gratitude asks us to be content; consumerism thrives on dissatisfaction. We vacillate between the extremes in a way that makes it difficult to feel anything other than whiplash.
Thanksgiving, as we celebrate it, sometimes feels pulled in two directions. On the one hand, it can be a communal expression of gratitude that is socially bonding. Collective rituals are powerful, an antidote to the atomization we feel as a society, and a reminder of how much we rely on each other. On the other hand, it can be a performative exercise that leaves us feeling hollow and resentful, reminding us of how far gratitude has drifted from its roots in humility and connection.
There is an old story about two wolves that live inside us, locked in constant struggle. One embodies the peace and contentment we feel when we rest in genuine appreciation for what’s present in our lives. The other embodies the dissatisfaction and resentment that come from feeling we don’t have enough. When these wolves fight, the one that wins is the one we feed. As with those wolves, what gratitude becomes—for each of us and for all of us—depends on which one we choose to nourish.
Love,
Doc
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