The Surprising Limitations of Gratitude: What You Need to Know
I had a flash insight today while driving on the way to pick up kids at school.
Was listening to an audiobook and the author was saying “well, if you want to be happy you have to be grateful first and then the happiness will come.”
I have heard that a million times in books, social media, podcasts, you name it.
There are a few books written on happiness - humans are obsessed with this.
We do want to be happy.
AKA, we do want to feel really good. We want to feel as best as we possibly can.
That is why we try SO hard to prove ourselves in this world thinking that if we just achieve a certain level of success seen by society, then we will feel happy and arrive.
Since that doesn’t work,
(because as soon as you ‘arrive’ where you thought was going to make you happy, the effects of feeling good don’t last too long. AND the emptiness that you have carried inside of yourself for years and that made you want to fill with success, will still be there.)
Well, being grateful is great but it won’t fill up the emptiness.
Believe me, I have tried and have seen many clients do the same.
Gratitude lists do not work to eventually fill in that empty gap and to make your life suddenly take off. They can work IF you have a certain kind of foundation.
Then it came to me.
What do I think happiness means? Truly?
It was so clear.
Happiness is having integrity with yourself.
Happiness is sleeping peacefully at night knowing that you are taking actions that are in agreement with your heart AND you are proud of it.
Happiness is waking up in the morning and having the clarity that what you are about to do is what you really want to do NO MATTER the consequences.
Happiness is having self-ruling confidence and trust in yourself.
Happiness is living your life with ease and heart resonance.
Happiness is feeling the coherence between your heart, mind, and actions.
Happiness is choosing yourself EVERY SINGLE DAY and feeling DANG PROUD of it.
There is NOTHING worse in this world than waking up every morning and continuously doing something YOU KNOW deep inside is not right, and yet CONTINUE to walk on that hamster wheel day in and day out.
It’s sick-making. It’s disease promoting. It’s happiness slashing no matter what. You can’t raise your vibration with no integrity.
You can reach a goal and feel ‘happy’ but if that goal was not in integrity with yourself, it will be short-lived.
You can have lots of ‘gratitude’ but if the first thing in your gratitude list is not ‘I am grateful for living my life with integrity and choosing myself every day’ that gratitude list will be just for show.
You can sit there and list all the things that you are grateful for every day, but if you are not first and foremost, grateful for having the guts and the courage to follow your heart and to take action on the things that resonate with you and who you are and what you want, then you are wasting your time.
After all, how can you be grateful for anything if you are not grateful for yourself and your courage to choose yourself FIRST, even when the whole world is doing its best to make you choose what everybody else wants for you?
This is, ultimately, the freedom that everybody wants.
And this is, ultimately, what is going to take you to fulfilling your lifelong dreams in the most delicious and joyful way possible.
No, I am not saying that ‘challenges’ won’t happen.
Yeah they will, you gotta have those to grow.
But the challenges are now in the ecosystem and paradigm of INTEGRITY - challenges in this environment, are quite different than the challenges that come from trying to get somewhere that is not in tune with who you are.
The not understanding this creates so many mental health problems, as people think there is something wrong with them.
NO.
There is nothing wrong with you.
You just need to get on the path of not lying to yourself.
And you just need to understand and own exactly what you want NO MATTER the outcome.
Life is SO INCREDIBLY worth living when most of the minutes of each of our days are coherent with our hearts - so much more peace, joy, presence, and magic potential to accomplish anything!