“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.” – Marcus Aurelius
In preparing to write to you about gratitude this week, I felt a little nervous. “How to insist on gratitude?” I found myself wondering, “We don’t always have to be grateful, do we?” I worried that if I suggested to you that even in dark moments, you could probably find something to be grateful for, it would sound like toxic positivity. I thought about my own dark moments and how out of reach gratitude has sometimes felt. Sure, even in darkness, I’ve had my privilege, air, water, food and shelter. Family and friends. Sure, even in darkness, I’ve had more than a lot of people have had, and still I haven’t always felt gratitude and I don’t suppose now that I should have, even if someone else might have been grateful to trade places with me. Grasping for gratitude in the midst of despair feels unnatural to me and so I feel the need to start by saying that that’s not what I’m suggesting here.
This, and, I know that gratitude has its place. More than that, I know how powerful the expression of gratitude can be. Like so many of the attitudes we’ve explored over these last many weeks, I also know that it doesn’t always come easily. While it does sometimes arise spontaneously, it’s regular recurrence in our life benefits from cultivation. The reasons why are the same old reasons. In the evolutionary trajectory of human existence, gratitude hasn’t served our survival as well as its opposite. As hunter-gatherers, appreciating our last meal wouldn’t have given us something to eat the next time we needed it. If we wanted to survive, we needed to be aware of what we didn’t have, especially if our lives depended on it, and in many cases, they did. It makes sense that our brains evolved to focus on our unmet needs but in the land-of-on-demand, the lines between needing and wanting, craving and envy, are easily blurred. We’re regularly exploited by media that insists on more, and more, and more and left longing to fill a void we can’t quite name.
Gratitude is our opportunity to disrupt the “more is always better” narrative. Gratitude is naming what’s good, what’s going well, what’s already been given and what’s already been accomplished, in order to counteract the brain’s more ready tendency to notice what’s bad, what’s wrong, what’s been lost and what’s still to be done. Like all of this, it’s a practice. It’s something that becomes more accessible the more we do it, not necessarily in our darkest moments, but at least in amongst our everyday, non-specific longings. This is why you’ve probably heard it suggested by someone, at some point, that you keep a gratitude journal. The suggestion is that we undermine our unending list of lack with undeniable documentation. For all the things you can name that are wrong, a gratitude journal becomes a long list of things that, you even said so yourself, are right.
The research on practicing gratitude is undeniable: It’s good for us (see “for more” below) and it feels good too. Like so many of the other attitudes of mindfulness, we might choose to practice gratitude for that reason alone: It might be the thing that turns down the inner dialogue that claims that what we have is not enough, that what we have done is not enough and ultimately, that we ourselves are not enough.
“Enough is enough,” says gratitude, even when we’d prefer not to hear it, “Enough accumulating. Enough striving. Enough grasping for more. What you have now is enough. What you have done is enough. What you are now is enough.”
At first we don’t believe it. We only pretend to accept this truth. Yeah, sure, but… If only… When I finally… I still need to… I just want… And there it is again, simply saying, “Enough.” Again and again, we practice this new refrain, until one day, maybe, even momentarily, it sinks in and it feels real. For one brief moment: Relief. Understanding. Security. And yes. Gratitude.
We linger there as long as we can, and then the practice begins again.
home practice
This week I hope you’ll continue your regular meditation practice, whatever that has come to look like for you. I hope you’re making your practice your own. Perhaps you’ve lengthened or shortened the suggested duration of 10-minutes a day. Maybe you’ve moved from using guided practices to experimenting with self-directed practices. Maybe you’ve started alternating a seated practice with a moving practice. I hope you continue this process of experimentation and self-discovery for as long as you need. When you’ve experimented enough to know what feels helpful to you, I hope you’ll settle into something regular and consistent. It’s through this disciplined, consistent practice that we begin to feel things shift. And, if anything has shifted for you already, reach out. I’d love to hear about your experience.
This week, I’m not sharing a recorded practice. Instead, I suggest you carry on with your practice as you see fit and make use of previous recordings if they are still helpful. Instead of a guided practice, I’m suggesting the reflective writing practice below. This can be done one day in place of your usual practice, or in addition to it. As always, you decide.
reflective writing practice
This practice is inspired by this recent episode of The Ally Maz Show podcast, with guest Mara Branscombe, where Ally and Mara discuss the idea that in reply to our brain’s natural tendency to ask, “What’s wrong?” we counter with, “What’s going well?” I encourage you to find a quiet moment this week to take out pen and paper and answer some version of this question:
What’s going well? What’s the good news? What’s right, right now?
You might make a list, you might write a story or you might argue the premise of the question itself. Don’t question what comes up – just write.
for more
This episode of the Hidden Brain podcast answers the question, “What gets in the way of gratitude?” The answers are, of course, human and relatable. In identifying the enemies of gratitude, host, Shankar Vedantam, and guest, Thomas Gilovich, identify ways to make gratitude more accessible.
In September of last year, the Huberman Lab podcast released a four part guest series on mental health with psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Conti. I joked that after listening to all four of the three- to four-hour episodes, I should have earned a certificate of some kind. But in all seriousness, all four episodes contain powerful wisdom on knowing the self and regularly revisit the idea that the healthy self sees life through the lenses of “agency and gratitude.” That tidbit has stayed with me ever since. The first episode in the series is here.
As always, reach out to me any time at taryn.greig@gmail.com or on Instagram @taryngreig. I’ll always reply.
Here’s to being here now.
In this 10-week series, I’ll be sharing weekly guidance on cultivating your own meditation practice. Weekly guides will be delivered to your inbox on Sunday morning and will include a reflection on one of the nine attitudes of mindfulness, practical guidance and a recorded practice that you may choose to use throughout the week. Feel free to share this resource with anyone who you think might appreciate it.