Be Grateful for Gratitude

In Twelve Step meetings, it’s traditional to groan when someone says, “Let’s have a gratitude meeting.” People don’t like to talk or think about what they’re grateful for. It’s not in our nature. We’re more tuned to what’s going wrong than what’s going right. We can’t help it. The cave men who sat around and admired how white the teeth on the saber toothed tiger were, didn’t last long enough to reproduce. The ones who realized those teeth were a bad thing are our ancestors, so to speak.

But gratitude is important. Sometimes I just sit in my office, which I painted and decorated myself after moving into a wonderful new house, and I look at all the hangings on the wall and the things on my desk and the books on my shelves and I remember growing up in a house where I couldn’t sleep in my bedroom in the winter because the north wind blew through the window and the room was uninhabitable. And I feel grateful.

Gratitude gets a bad rap as being some sort of “feel-good” thing, but it’s not. Real, true, deep gratitude comes from the soul. It’s not some pop-culture thing. It’s not something you say to make yourself look good or to make someone else feel good.

Real gratitude is truly appreciating what you have, and feeling it’s enough. Sure, there are other things you’d like to have. There always will be. But in gratitude, you realize that if you don’t get the new car or the new house, it’s enough.

We should be “grateful for gratitude” because it’s one of the fastest ways to appreciate our lives and feel happier. This simple technique, practiced every day, can change your life.