When gratitude is hard: a new way to approach gratitude

In the current climate when gratitude is hard to find in our everyday lives sometimes, what do we do?! Gratitude sometimes can feel like it’s been overdone (just me?!) and yet the benefits of gratitude have been proven time and time again. Even the notion of being grateful on a hard day conjures up an image of a preachy influencer posing at sunset gushing about how wonderful their life is, and turns me off. Yet here I am, about to write in praise of gratitude, about how gratitude helped to shift my perspective when I was very anxious and depressed, and a new way of approaching gratitude when it feels like gratitude is hard and you have nothing to be grateful for.

As much as I can read the research and hear other people praising something, I am a “you have to experience it, to embrace it kind of girl”.

It wasn’t until I embraced a consistent gratitude practice that I began to believe in how helpful gratitude could be.

If you’re someone who is persuaded by research, you are in for a treat. Many studies over the past fifteen years have found that people who deliberately count their blessings (have a gratitude practice) tend to be happier and less depressed. Going further, in positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly associated with greater happiness. A regular gratitude practice helps people feel more positive emotions, savour good experiences, improve their physical and mental health, and build resilience.

My friend Cath, very wise and author of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, had been going on at me for years to start a gratitude practice. I dutifully ignored her. Sometimes starting one halfheartedly, only to stop two days later.

Starting to practice gratitude again

When I hit a very low point in the early summer of 2019, I began to ‘practice’ gratitude again – and I have kept it up ever since. In honesty, I was trying everything and anything that I thought might help lift me out of my depression. Practice is in quotation marks here because I really am not very good at gratitude. Well, I’m not very good at doing it consistently. I’m prone to fall asleep before I write my gratitudes at night and to slip back into negative thinking faster than I can say positive affirmation.

At the end of August 2019, I went to Cambodia. (Beautiful country, changed my life, now live here – if you are interested, read more about how and why I moved to Cambodia). The friend, who I had travelled with, commented on how quickly the gratitude thing I was trying had turned me into a person who could see the bright side.

Gratitude helped to shift my perspective

When she said “oh this sucks, it’s raining again tomorrow”; I’d say “great, a chance to read our books and go for a massage”. I’m rolling my eyes at myself here too. Yet, I didn’t even realise I’d turned into a Positive Polly until she pointed it out. I wasn’t even trying to see the good in situations, it was just happening.

Admittedly, being grateful for small things – like the energy to shower or brush my teeth – was fairly simple when I was in the pit of depression. Likewise, being grateful for the amazing experiences when I was on holiday was not difficult!

What to do when gratitude is hard

What is less easy for me, and may I hazard a guess for you too, is being grateful for the bog-standard, humdrum, mundanity of everyday life. Especially life in early 2021.

My thinking at the end of these normal yet difficult days can tend towards: today I worked most of the day, the roads are shit, we’re in the middle of a pandemic and now I’m in bed exhausted – what is there to be grateful for?

(I fully acknowledge my privilege here, but I know I am not alone in getting bogged down by the every day).

This is where the reframe comes in. I can’t lay claim to this wisdom. In truth, I have adapted it from a quote I saw on instagram. (I removed the religious connotations from the original post).

If you only had today what you were thankful for yesterday, what would you have?

Let that sink in for a moment. I know it can take a while to get your head around. It took me a good ten minutes. Let me write it again.

If you only had today what you were thankful for yesterday, what would you have?

This perspective shift changed the game for me. All of a sudden, I was filling two or more pages with gratitudes each night. When gratitude is hard, I come back to it again and again.

Previously, I sometimes felt hard done by due to my full day and the aforementioned shit roads, being far away from my family and the stress that comes with starting a business. Now, I can picture how much I would miss all of these things if they weren’t there. On really shit days, the worst days, when gratitude is hard I can still find something to be thankful for: the accident of birth separates me from the 1 billion people suffering in this world, that I have a bed to sleep in and a computer to type on and the freedom of choice to do what I want to do.

And finding gratitude in my current day everyday reality:

Shit roads – thankful for being in Cambodia, for the sunshine and for the relative freedom – even if it does mean shit roads

Far away from my family – my choice, I have a family I care about and luckily they are currently all safe and healthy – plus it will be all the sweeter when I get to see them again.

Building a business – again, my choice. I love coaching women and writing and teaching yoga. Even if it’s tough sometimes and the shift from being an employee to working for yourself is uncertain.

Why don’t you try it? Think about what you would have today, based on what you were actively thankful for yesterday.

And then moving forward from today, pay thanks for what you have.

When gratitude is hard, why don’t you try doing this?

Think about everything you have today, and be grateful for it. The small things, and the big things. Everything you would miss if it was gone.

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