When I coach top earning authors, especially for the first time, almost every single one of them, when they’re first describing their pain point, says something like this:
“I know I should be grateful for this, and these are such tiny problems compared to what everyone else is facing…”
But.
Here’s my soapbox about gratitude.
When we tell people they should be grateful, or we tell ourselves we should be grateful, I want to know where that’s coming from.
Because if it’s coming from the mindset of, “you’re making money, you shouldn’t have problems,” that’s not correct. Making more money often brings bigger problems because you are now responsible for more, and you have to maintain momentum to make payroll, etc. So the idea that your problems go away when you make more money is an inaccurate perception.
If it’s coming from the mindset of, “gratitude cancels out pain,” we need to be cautious of that. We want to feel pain when it’s there to be felt. Not wallow in it. Get through it. Pain is instructive. It teaches us how to be better, act better, live better, do better.
Caveat for people who are high Positivity and sometimes Empathy, because of course, some of us equalize pain quickly and move on to the upside. And when that’s your personality, great. Be that. Do that.
But not everyone needs to just “be grateful” as a way of canceling out their negative feelings or their very viable and valuable pain in a situation that needs careful attention. (Not the least reason of which: if you don’t actually **feel** the gratitude, it does no good to be told you should feel it… but I’ll get to that in a minute.)
Pretending everything is fine when it isn’t… that’s not gratitude. It’s ignorance. And in some situations, it’s cruel and destructive.
If you don’t have the tools to face pain, or if you don’t have the skills to work through disappointment, those are skills we can increase our capacity in. We don’t use gratitude as a mask to hide behind or a panacea.
Again, I’m not saying everyone who’s encouraging people to be grateful is doing that. But so often, the voice that’s telling us “we should be grateful” is a toxic pattern from the past, laid down in cemented tracks that need to be deconstructed and replaced.
It was helpful at one time in our past, and now we can see it’s unhelpful.
When you have a problem, feeling all the feelings about it should lead to either resolution (what can I do about it) or security (turns out it’s not as big a problem as I thought). (Also… not “what can be done about it,” but this wording is important… what can I DO about it… because if I can do nothing, then either I have to change my expectations, or I have to accept that I can do nothing and then work on resilience.)
I realize this is not a popular discussion to have, but many of us need to stop trying to ignore or avoid feeling pain, and instead work through it to get to the solution on the other side. (Restoratives, Self-Assurances: ignore this. Probably most Responsibility people, too.)
But gratitude as a cancel-out-of-pain only works if you actually **feel** the gratitude. Not if you just think you should feel it (those two things are not the same). And when someone tells you that you “should” do something, you’re not going to feel what they’re telling you to feel. Pretending to feel gratitude won’t change how you really feel. But acknowledging how you really feel can lead you to gratitude.
So. That’s my soapbox.
Feelings are productive. Emotions are productive. Sitting in them doesn’t produce anything. But neither does ignoring them.
Anyway. I’m going to go back to the writing again. Gotta get my star for the day.
Love you all.
– Becca
