Gratituesday: You Don’t Need a New Thing to Be Grateful For
You need to realize it’s the same things making all the difference
Every night, I write down three things I’m grateful for. I’ve been doing this for ten years. That’s more than 10,000 voluntary thank-yous. At first, I tried hard to be creative. “What did I not write down yet? What’s something unique to be grateful for?”
James Altucher is big on this. He calls it “difficult gratitude”: “When stuck in traffic, be grateful to be living in such a magnificent place that everyone wants to be there. When a child yells back, see the birth of independence of yet another unique personality beginning its private journey on this planet.”
In the beginning, it was easy to come up with a great variety of things. As it always does, however, eventually, life happened. I got lazy. Busy. I had bad days. When I felt tired, I just threw together three quick things. When I was sad or unmotivated, I listed the same stuff.
Initially, I felt bad whenever I repeated a previous reason. “I’m not as grateful as I should be. If I was more grateful, I’d find better things,” I told myself. One day, however, I realized: Gratitude is not a creativity exercise. It’s a gratitude exercise.
You don’t need a new thing to be grateful for each day. You need to understand it’s the same things, over and over again, that make you happy. Don’t feel bad for covering the basics. After all, the basics are what matters.
At least 200 of my thank-yous went to coffee. You might say that’s boring, but I find it reassuring. How comforting if, time and again, you realize all you need is coffee, cheap groceries, and free music on Youtube to have a good day.
If you need a new gratitude fix every day, if you chase ever bigger outcomes in hopes of putting them on that list, you’re doing it wrong. Gratitude is not a game of ambition. That’s the opposite of what it’s for.
Sometimes, I still try to be creative. Instead of coffee itself, I might pick my coffee maker, which, despite also counting ten years, hasn’t broken down yet. But whenever I catch myself writing down another thing I’ve used a thousand times, I smile.
A warm bed, free wifi, fresh air. These are the things that make life an honor to wake up to, not winning an Oscar or seeing the pyramids. Those are just the gravy — and we all know fries taste best with ketchup.
-Nik
About Gratituesday: By Tuesday, we're deep into thinking about what we seek. That's why it's a great day to remember what we’ve already found. Gratitude has many benefits, but, mostly, it's an exercise in shifting our perspective. Instead of focusing on what's missing, we can focus on what we have.
And we'll be much calmer for it.