One of the biggest clichés in self-development is the power of gratitude.
You’ll hear so many different versions about how bringing out this feeling of gratitude, being grateful for everything that you have, no matter how bad your current state is, all the blessings and gifts that you have, and being aware of this and acknowledging it and bringing it to mind seems to have very powerful effects on our state of mind.
It seems to be near the heart of what it means to have a good attitude about things.
So it really seems like this is one of the central disciplines, the central pillars of a good mindset.
And we hear about it in so many different versions, and it seems to me to be valid.
From my own experience, I’ve found that when I have this state of mind, everything send tends to be better.
And when I lose this state of mind, that’s when I go into a dark outlook on the world.
But I’ve also been thinking about how there’s a limit to it, and that it maybe needs to be taken to the next level.
Because it’s like just saying “thank you”, and the this feeling of being grateful, just by itself, only goes so far.
It’s like if you are given a gift and you say “thank you”, then, you know,that is good, and you know, it’s better than not saying thank you, you know, saying “Go away.
Why are you bothering me?” So it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
But imagine if you are receiving a gift every day, you receive a wonderful gift, and you say “Thank you.” And the next day you get another wonderful gift, and you say “Thank you.” And you can keep doing this every day.
It’s clearly moving things in a good direction.
But at some point it’s like OK, you’re saying thank you, but you’re receiving this wonderful gift, and you’re just saying “thank you” and moving on.
And yes, it can be, you know, a deep, heartfelt thank you, and really feeling the gratitude, and it can be saying “thank you” more than once a day.
It could be saying- you could be saying thank you all day for the wonderful gifts that you’re receiving, you know, from the universe, from life, from this chance that we have to exist, to be alive, to experience whatever this is, that this is a wonderful gift that we are receiving every day and every moment of every day.
And we can be thankful all day, we can say “Thank you”, we can feel gratitude, and all that is good and right.
But at some point, it seems like we can take it further than just saying “Thank you”.
There’s there’s somehow a certain limit to how deep it can go if we simply say “Thank you” and feel the thank you.
If we really feel thankful, it’s almost like having that feeling leads to certain actions.
It’s not just a feeling.
We can start with the feeling of being grateful for what we’re given.
But if we really feel gratitude, it’s like it leads us to want to honour the gift, to honour the gift-giver.
You know, just we keep getting given wonderful gifts, and we say “Oh, thanks.
Bye.
Thanks.
See you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.” Keep doing this day after day.
As much as it is clearly better than just, you know, completely ignoring the gift-giver, and not even feeling thank you, maybe the next level of gratitude is not simply to feel gratitude and to say “Thank you”, but to actually pledge and commit to honour this gift.
What does that mean? What does it mean to honour the gift that we’re given? And maybe that is where this feeling of gratitude, and the statement, and this the feeling of being grateful for what we have received: what kind of action does that lead us into? And it seems like, you know, if somebody gives us a gift, and we really feel grateful for that gift, it kind of guides us to maybe give something back, or at least have some kind of action towards the gift-giver that honours the gift giver and the gift.
So I’d be curious to hear what you think about this.
How do we bring this feeling of gratitude into action? How do we make it into- how do we make our actions reflect this feeling that we have? Or is the whole gratitude thing just an overblown concept?
#gratitude #beyondgratitude #honourthegift