It's Thanksgiving on Thursday in the United States and at this time of year period routinely list out the things for which they are thankful. Along with that routine comes the reminder that we ought to be thankful more often and not just at Thanksgiving. Gratitude doesn't generate automatically and once generated, it quickly dissipates. Gratitude is like its own workout.
Gratitude is not just generally important. I have come to learn that gratitude is an essential component of living an active life. Whenever we feel ourselves losing our inspiration and motivation to wotk out and fight against the strong gravitational pull of the couch you can be sure that behind that motivational inertia lies something with which we are fundamentally unhappy. I've written recently about three of the big feelings that can suck the happiness and motivation right out of us: comparison, all or nothing thinking, and pointlessness. Comparison makes us feel that working out is not important since we can't do it as well as other people or even as well as we used to do it at some other time. All or nothing thinking tricks us into the false belief that only grand gestures matter, when really any incremental movement towards wellness is worthwhile. Pointlessness is the inverse of all or nothing thinking, which is the self-imposed delusion that the small things we do won't make a difference. These three false beliefs, just like all other self-defeating thoughts, are rooted in our ego voice that resists all change in a misguided effort to protect us from failure, pain and discomfort.
Gratitude is a great way to defeat that self-destructive ego voice that keeps us from healthy and productive change and discomfort. But if it's so effective and everyone pays lip service to the concept every year at this time, why do we need so much reminding every year to be thankful for what we have? Especially when things are going wrong in our lives, being told to be grateful when we're stuck with seemingly intractable problems feels cruel and pointless.
But just like working out when we feel least like doing it improves our mood and makes us feel better, developing feelings of gratitude when we feel resistant to it accomplishes the same result. And just like working out is a workout, gratitude is a workout too - it is a deliberate exercise of a specific emotional muscle.
The best analogy I've heard comes from American author William Faulkner:
“Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity; it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.”
Just like our workouts are a consistent practice, which can't be stored up and saved for another day, gratitude is a practice too. To access it is simple, if not always easy -- we generate the intention, focus it on the source for which we are grateful and then release that energy, just like we do when we are swimming, biking or running.
So the next time you feel down, unmotivated, and decidedly ungrateful, try to break that mood by doing a short workout -- a gratitude workout. And see if that helps you.
Happy Thanksgiving.