Guest Blog - What You Didn’t Realize About Gratitude

What You Didn’t Realize About Gratitude

By: Ari Banayan

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” 
― Epicurus

The very simple truth is that it feels much better to feel grateful and happy for what we have than it does to long and desire for what we don’t.

It’s remarkable how much time we spend in negativity- suspicion, anxiety, longing, loneliness, anger, frustration, etc. If anybody was asked whether they enjoy their own negative thoughts or corresponding feelings, the obvious answer is of course not.

The question then is, why are our psyches constantly bathing in what doesn’t feel good?

One of the ways in which we can grow out of our usual negative associative thinking is through replacing it with gratitude.

If we take a look at the way we live, we can clearly see that we generally only feel grateful when good things happen to us (and limited situations like Holidays or hearing about other people’s difficulties). We take everything we currently have for granted because we’ve grown accustomed to having it.

I have a very simple exercise for you:

Take a moment to connect with your arms and think about how much work they do throughout the course of a day. Have you ever thought about how much more difficult it would be to turn off your alarm, open a door, brush your teeth, put on your shoes, drink water, or change your child’s diaper would be without arms?

What you’re hopefully feeling now by just connecting with how valuable your arms and hands are is gratitude.

When we take steps to begin replacing our usual associative thinking with thoughts about all that we have to be grateful for, the quality of our lives begins to change. The positivity that results can quite literally penetrate our entire psyche and outlook on the world.

When we look at any given situation and see either an ‘opportunity’ or an ‘obstacle,’ a ‘problem’ or merely something that has to be dealt with, something to be grateful for or negative about, we’re making a decision at that moment about what our reality will consist of. As we continue to see the situations we’re presented with in the same manner over and over, we start to believe that what we think is the absolute truth.

If we can begin to stop listening to our initial automatic response to what life presents us with, we can learn to choose how to view and feel about the circumstances of our lives.

We all know that gratitude ‘feels good.’ We all long to have a life that we can be grateful for, but the truth is that the circumstances of our lives will never make us grateful. No matter what amazing things happen in our lives, we will eventually take for granted everything that this beautiful world gives us the same way we take for granted all that we currently have.

Unless we start realizing what we have to be grateful for, right now, in this moment, we will never enjoy gratitude on a consistent basis. This requires effort – making a practice of thinking differently every single day.

But the reward is beyond measure.

Ari Banayan is an attorney and healthy lifestyle entrepreneur focused on fundamentally changing the way we approach personal development. He's a co-founder of Habit Nest, a company that creates products and content intended to help anyone take action to create positive change. He also co-founded the Morning Sidekick Journal - a journal that can help anyone become a morning person and create the perfect morning routine to start the day.