Gratitude For This Stubborn Experience Will Change Your Worldview
What if, instead of being grateful for the things you enjoyed, you found gratitude in the things you didn’t?
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What if you could turn gratitude on its head toward that one, stubborn yet consistent life experience that we all hope to avoid—an experience that occurs when reality doesn’t meet your expectations, hopes, or dreams?
But before we learn what this stubborn experience is, consider this…
When you ask someone about their day, what’s their typical response generally filled with? They may sound like:
“OMG, there was an accident on the way home and it backed up traffic for miles. It was so frustrating!”
“Well, I was late to work because I was behind somebody who was apparently driving Ms. Daisy because they were SO SLOW. Anyway, I got to work late, my boss was like ‘WTF?’ and it just snowballed from there.”
“A coworker and I argued to no end. Ugh! It was so frustrating because she just likes to challenge everything.”
“Don’t talk to me, I’m starving. I forgot my lunch today and I need to eat something before I kill someone.”
What you don’t hear people say are responses like:
“Well, I made it to and from work safely. There was more traffic on the road than normal, so it gave me a good opportunity to think to myself.”
“There was this driver in front of me who I couldn’t pass, and it afforded me an opportunity to discover a new podcast which I REALLY liked.”
“I had a heated conversation with a coworker, but it challenged me to see a new perspective which I’m thankful for because I never would have considered it otherwise.”
“I forgot my lunch today so I was worried I was gonna starve, but I’m actually grateful for it because now I know I can miss a meal and not only be okay but feel good!”
See the difference?
It’s easy to focus on the negative—on criticizing, complaining, fixating on things that went wrong or the obstacles you faced, rather than on the path already cleared and the benefits or lessons gained.
If you dig deeper into the frustration of difficult conversations, the impatience of sitting in traffic, or the physical pain of hunger, there’s one underlying factor—an unwanted experience—that binds them all.
This experience is something every human endures yet tries to avoid, and when they do experience it, they try to suppress it. It is so stubborn because as soon as you think you got control of it, it rears its ugly face again only to show up in another moment.
What is this stubborn experience? Suffering.
Suffering is what happens when your expectations are mismatched with reality, when the illusion of control confounds you into thinking that you have more power than you really do.
You think you can control traffic, but that’s not reality.
You try to compel that driver to speed up by swearing at him, but that's not reality.
You want the coworker to stop arguing and just tell you you’re right, but that’s not reality.
As a result, you experience suffering because the reality you want isn’t the reality that is.
This leads to three inescapable truths. The first truth is that:
1) You are not, and will never be, in control.
In other words, you can control how you make meaning of the things that happen to you, but that's where it ends.
Remember, it’s not what happens to you but rather how you perceive what happens to you that causes suffering. The meaning you ascribe can either lead to understanding or agony. I talked about this in another article. It’s also much easier said than done—but it absolutely can be done, it just takes work.
In that space between hope and reality lies meaning. Here are some examples:
“I shouldn’t have said all that in the meeting [hope], but I did [reality]. Now everybody thinks I’m an idiot [meaning].”
“Nobody answers my job applications [reality; the hope is that they do]. I’ll never find a job [meaning].”
The thing is, the meaning you create for yourself is also what creates your suffering, because none—read ZERO—of these statements can be proven.
Anyway, the lack of control stated in truth #1 leads to the second truth, which is:
2) Suffering is inevitable.
The inevitability of suffering is something to be grateful for, because without suffering you’d never know pleasure.
I can sense the eye-rolling now, and I understand. It is cliché and, quite frankly, it’s not something you can sink your teeth into. It’s not a strategy, there’s no feedback you can act on, and being told, “Well, you can never be happy if you’re not sad” is akin to telling somebody who’s struggling financially that money doesn’t buy happiness. While such a cliché may ring true, it resonates more deeply when you’re not in dire financial straits.
So, what meaning can we ascribe to truth #2 without repeating yet another ho-hum self-help platitude?
What truth #2 really speaks to is acceptance. Acceptance with what is, similar to the serenity prayer.
From this perspective, the inevitability of suffering is a strategy and does provide feedback.
You know whether you’ve accepted or not, and you know whether you will accept or not. Therefore, you can use acceptance in your feedback loop to gauge where you are on the scale of control (i.e., trying to control your suffering or accepting suffering for what it is).
This often happens retrospectively. It’s much easier to look back on an event and understand why it happened than to accept something in the moment you don’t want.
But acceptance also affords gratitude, because when you recognize that most circumstances are out of your control, you learn to be thankful for the ones that are.
This leads to the third truth, which is this:
3) Suffering creates growth.
Suffering is unavoidable, so by making a commitment not to consent to the causes of pain but instead to focus on the forces that shape it, you break free from the reigns of suffering and become freer yourself.
Your perception of suffering is shaped by the attention you give it, by the meaning you ascribe. Changing your focus (and therefore the meaning) allows you to change the narrative of your story and thus turn suffering into gratitude.
Gratitude isn’t something you have but rather something you practice. The difference between having gratitude and practicing gratitude is the difference between doing and being. Having gratitude is akin to gaining a “thing,” whereas practicing gratitude is an expression of who you are.
Journal Prompts
When/where do I fight myself the most? What are the triggers?
What emotion am I trying to avoid by fighting?
Is the reality or expectation that I’m trying to create realistic? Why or why not?