Giving and getting more gratitude.
It’s that time of year where people start complaining about—
wait. I meant to say, it’s that time of year to celebrate the holidays!!
Yeah, except most people don’t celebrate. They complain.
Here’s the short list I’ve heard so far:
1) “oh God. The traffic.”
2) “ Ugh. I have to cook for all those people. Just gotta make it through until Friday.”
3) “Yeah, well. It’s sunny but freezing out—so miserable.”
4) “Thank God that day is over.”
5) “I hate Christmas music.”
That’s the short list but I’m sure you’ve heard some variation on all of those. Are you also the person uttering them?
Why do so many people complain about so many things?
I’ve wondered that for a long time, especially since waking up to privilege and trauma and lack and all those things over the past 20 years. It’s a ride through life that I recommend you take but I will say that the sights look different depending on where you sit. A colleague and I can have a conversation about privilege and lack but she’s looking through a lens that is very different than mine. And mine is different from a person with other identities. So take a ride in the shoes of another person sometime, life looks really different.
Back to complaining.
People complain from feeling disempowered and frustrated. But mostly they complain from a lack of gratitude. The human brain is wired to constantly seek out means and resources to survive. We are motivated to meet our basic needs according to Maslow and that includes things like our “Purpose”. If you don’t agree, try working at the same job you hate just to pay the bills and compare that to working at a job of your choosing that you really enjoy because it fulfills something you’re good at and enjoy learning about or doing no matter when or how long. That’s your purpose.
Some people think it’s crap. I think they’re jaded and cynical. And those people complain a lot. No coincidence.
Gratitude is the antidote to complaining. Feeling grateful and complaining is like trying to sneeze with your eyes open, you can’t do it at the same time. That’s what I told the sold out crowd at my recent Make Happy Happen seminar in New Jersey. We had 50+ people there and they had a blast! Happiness is connected to gratitude, or so I told them, so I spent significant amounts of time having them consider their relationship to being grateful. And how giving and gratitude is where happiness begins and ends, for the most part.
Many people (in the U.S.) think of gratitude as something to consider around Thanksgiving. But if you REALLY want your life to work and feel more fulfilling, you want to focus on gratitude every day. In fact, you want to focus on it as often as you can. It’s pretty hard to break the habit of wanting and striving (again, those basic needs are pretty strong motivators) all the time. Because it’s hard to change that habit, it’s easy to lose gratitude for what’s already in your hand.
But the trickiest part of all is how we do actually thrive, to a certain extent, from striving and wanting to grow. Adversity helps nurture resilience. Without setbacks or hardships, there’s nothing inspiring us to grow to become our best self. So, if we’re doing Life “right”, we’re constantly in this tug-of-war with being happy with what we have while working for what we want and who we want to become. And a big part of that is giving back or giving out more to get more of what you want to receive or add to what you have already.
Remember those see-saws from way back in the day? The metal that burned the bottoms of your thighs and the way it would crash down and jar your coccyx? (that’s your tailbone) But then there was the joy of flying WAAAAAAY up in the air with your legs dangling down, and you could see above peoples’ heads and the tops of trees and stuff.
Giving and getting gratitude is like that. It’s a damn see-saw.
It’s giving more for the mere art of selflessness while finding ways to get what you need without being a damn co-dependent.
Because hoarding things like love or money or whatever else never gets us what we want. We think it will but you only have to try doing that for a week or month or a few decades and you see it doesn’t really work.
Doesn’t stop most human beings from continously doing it, though. Aren’t we such wonderful mysteries?!
To wrap up, because I probably should, if you want to be happy work on your relationship to gratitude. Are you in a constant state of being happy for what you have? Are you able to find the silver lining even when life is challenging?
Then notice how much you complain. Ask yourself if the complaining ever changes anything. Be curious why you do it.
That’s a lot of self-awareness and self-reflection.
Keep going. It’s making you a better human and increasing your quality of life on this planet. But don’t just trust me, just take a look around you and pay attention to people.
Who is most grateful? How do they act? What are they like to be around?
Now notice people who complain. Notice their daily existence.
Who would you rather be?