The Balancing Act of Gratitude (Kid-Tested, Mother-Approved)

(Note: The following is a version of this post that has been edited down for length, and for my potty mouth.  This is for people who have arrived here upon hearing my post read on Optimal Living Daily.  Hi everyone!  Check out my whole site, and my free e-book on awesome time management!)

Is there any better feeling than the first, like, two hours after you’ve been sick?

We forget how absolutely awful being sick is—until we get sick again. Then, there’s this intense feeling of, first of all, “I forgot how horrendous this is,” followed up quickly by, “I can’t wait for this to be over.  I’ll be so, so, so happy when I can just feel normal again.”

Then when ‘normal’ returns, we are so, so happy.  We don’t need riches, or laughter, or even the most basic human stimulation.  We’re just so ecstatic that we can move again without vomiting up our cheerios.

More than anything, we are extremely grateful, and that overwhelming, relieving gratitude is the best feeling we’ll ever feel.

For like two hours, that is.  After that, we forget that we were sick, and promptly return to getting angry that our phone battery is low, and that only the worst people on Tinder seem to respond to our corny e-pickup lines.  We return to being spoiled and ungrateful.

It would be nice if we could feel that intense post-illness gratitude without first having to go through the whole, you know, “being violently ill” thing.

Our Sucktitude at Gratitiude

Humans–especially in the first world–generally suck at gratitude.  We always need to be in the midst of a hurricane in life before we can appreciate a merely cloudy day.  This is why people from third-world countries can enjoy simpler pleasures, and why we in the first world generally want simpler pleasures to  go away and get our Amazon package here more quickly.

I mean think of everything we take for granted every day.

Think of what a tree is–this giant, living contraption growing from the floating rock you’re existing on, eating up sunlight, and spitting out existence.   Think of the labor, and the societal genius that took place to create everything around you–from your phone, to your couch, to your car, to books.  Think about how amazing it is that friends exist—I mostly mean the concept, but I guess also the TV show.

Think of how you have more access to the awesome parts of life than ever.  You have more access to every person, place, thing, idea–every noun you’ve ever enjoyed!

We are surrounded with mind-blowing, out-of-this-world, wonders that should melt our faces every day.

And yet, your face remains very much intact and frowny unless someone is pointing a phone at it, and you’re in front of a place with good lighting.

We’re completely unable to enjoy the infinite amount of awesomeness all around us. Everything is instantly taken for granted, and disposed of, and nothing is ever fully appreciated, and as a result–shocker–we suck at feeling good.

So how can we suck less at gratitude?   The same way we suck less at anything: practice.

How to Practice an Emotion

You hear the phrase, “Practice gratitude” a lot, but what does that mean?  How do you practice an emotion?

I think it’s about as simple as it sounds.  You start by looking at something you should be grateful for–like your mom, or nachos (for many of us, our 1 and 2), and you focus on how great they are, and how fortunate you are to get to experience that thing.  You do this several times a day.

But won’t that be awkward and unnatural, and really feel like it’s not working?  Won’t it be impossible at first to just force that feeling upon on yourself?

Oh hell yes.  When you first try to be practice gratitude, you’ll say something to yourself like, “I am really lucky to have Todd in my life.  He brings me joy with his dry wit, and I love when he gives me a ride to my water aerobics class,” and then you’ll wait for that gratitude emotion to kick in.

But inside, you’ll still feel, well, dead.  You’ll feel absolutely nothing for Todd. You’ll just be some person that said a sentence to themselves.

So yes, at first, practicing gratitude will straight up will not work.  That’s okay. That’s why it’s practice, and why you have to do it over and over.  The more you force yourself into the grateful, big picture perspective, the more it (slowly) starts to become a part of you, and the more you’re able to actually feel a little less dead in the soul.

So fake it till you make it.  Express statements of gratitude over and over, and eventually, these ideas will become a part of you.  The notion that you can fully appreciate people around you, or a sunny day, or your grandma’s walnut cookies will become ingrained in your soul, and eventually, you’ll start to feel more grateful.

This is why–especially at first–you need to seek out gratitude every single day.  It’s not because you need a dose of gratitude every day.  It’s because gratitude is unnatural.  We’re predisposed to being spoiled assholes who always need things to get better, because misery pushes humanity forward.

We have to practice not sucking at gratitude, so that when we need it, it’s there.  But with that said….

When Is It Too Much Gratitude?

Once you get good at feeling gratitude on command, is there such thing as appreciating life too much, and taking too much time to stop and smell the flowers, so to speak?

Yes, of course.  Too much of anything sucks.  If, instead of looking ahead in life, and trying to experience and accomplish more, you’re just always enjoying what’s in front of you, and you’re like, “Wow, bricks!” then you’ll never follow ambitions, or seek out anything new in life, and that sucks.

You shouldn’t be happy with a situation that sucks for anyone, and you shouldn’t focus on the positive in an overwhelmingly negative situation, because then you won’t fix negative things.  You’ll just keep telling yourself they aren’t negative, and that’s helping nobody.

You need both gratitude for what you have, and the feeling that you need more so that you make progress in life.  There’s a method to this that I’ve found effective.

How to Balance Your Gratitude

So the solution there, I believe, is this:  It’s actually okay to go through a decent chunk of life as the ungrateful, unsatisfied whiners that we naturally are.   This makes us want more, demand better from those around us, and feel bitter that we don’t have more than we currently do—which is good in small doses.

We remain in this state until it ceases to be productive.  When this approach puts us into a mood that is negative to the point of being debilitating, we turn to the teat of gratitude, and we suckle from it until we’re burping joy and rainbows.  We notice, “Oh no, I’m feeling anxious and crabby, and it’s making me  unproductive,” then we meditate, we ponder the wonderful world around us, listen to Louis Armstrong, and we thank our lucky God damn stars.

We take a hit from our gratitude pipe.

This is one way that you can actually see the world more accurately for the pretty awesome place that it is, and be a little bit happier.

So find your balance between thinking your world sucks and needs to be improved, and the perspective that this is an incredible world full of wonder.  Practice gratitude, and then when you get good at it, find your moments of gratitude.  Force the square peg that is your spoiled, ungrateful brain into the round hole of gratitude until its edges are rubbed off, and it fits.

And eventually, when you practice a ton and get really good at it, you won’t need to vomit up your dinner to feel better ever again.