We are told that gratitude is essential to our happiness. People urge us to feel grateful for all the good things in our lives and stop dwelling on what we don’t have, what we have lost or what has hurt us.
Is gratitude an overblown idea? Is it disempowering? Is it not the key to happiness after all?
A good starting point to answer these questions is to look at where the good things in our lives come from. Here are 3 of the main sources of our good fortune:
- Luck – being in the right place at the right time.
- Achievement – we get a lot good things by working hard for them.
- Someone does something for us – we should feel gratitude for any help.
But, you ask, why shouldn’t we feel grateful for all three of these sources of good things in our lives? There is confusion over the meaning of ‘grateful’. The word ‘grateful’ is a bit like words such as ‘love’, ‘like’, ‘eat’, ‘want’, ‘see’. These words all imply an object. You can’t just love; you have to love something or someone. You can’t just see; you have to see some object. Similarly, you can’t just eat; you have to eat some food. Other words have no object. You can just rest or relax, for example. Unlike relaxing, we can’t feel gratitude in a vacuum. We can only feel gratitude to a person for something they did for us.
Instead of feeling gratitude for everything good in our lives, we should feel fortunate that we have been so lucky or that we have had the drive, talent and energy to achieve worthwhile things for ourselves. Good fortune covers all 3 sources of good things in our lives. To be happy, we should think of all the reasons we have to feel fortunate, not just the things that we are grateful for. Fortunate is better than gratitude because it doesn’t imply an object. We can simply feel fortunate just as independently as we can feel relaxed, tired, upset, excited or anxious.
The Place of Achievement
We are more likely to feel good about ourselves if we focus on the good things we got through our own effort, hard work and personal strengths. Achievement boosts our self-esteem. Feeling good about ourselves because of our own achievements isn’t the same as happiness but it plays a great supporting role. Encouraging people to focus on achieving things for themselves is very empowering. Conversely, feeling gratitude can foster a sense of dependence on others to do things for us. This can feel a bit like being an animal in a zoo; they don’t need to do anything for themselves. Someone will feed them, give them shelter and look after their health.
Example
I feel very lucky that I met my wife when I did. Our meeting was just a lucky circumstance that was not arranged and might not have happened at all. I feel grateful to her for wanting to spend the rest of her life with me. I also feel that I have achieved some good things in my life. I feel very fortunate that all of these good things happened to me in my life. There is no one I can feel grateful to for the lucky chance of meeting my wife when I did. I can feel grateful for the support of family and education as a starting point for achievement but most of what I achieved was due to my own effort and determination so, for the most part, gratitude is not relevant for my achievements.
How Gratitude Can Disempower
If you view ‘gratitude’ in a very vague sense, then it can mean the same to you as ‘fortunate’. However, if it leads you to feel grateful to others for all the good things in your life, you risk overlooking your own role in making good things happen for you. You could tell yourself “I worked hard for this. No one helped me other than giving me a few tips along the way. But I really did it myself. I don’t need to feel grateful or indebted to anyone for my success.”
This is not to rule out feelings of gratitude where they are warranted. The point is to recognize how much you have achieved primarily through your own efforts. This attitude is empowering if it builds your confidence that there could be much more that you could achieve, that you have the talent, motivation and drive to achieve even more success in your life. Of course, you should feel grateful for any help you get and no one can achieve very much with no help at all. It’s a matter of balance, recognizing which things to be grateful for and which to give yourself credit for. Telling your children or your team members that they can achieve more with their own strengths, drive and energy is empowering. Telling them they should be grateful for everything, even those things they achieve, mainly on their own, is disempowering and may hinder their future success.
Feelings of gratitude can make you feel like a recipient of someone’s good will, while achievement can make you feel like an actor in charge of your own destiny.
How Feeling Fortunate Helps You
Regardless of whether you prefer to feel fortunate or grateful, the benefits can be significant. Recognizing our good fortune improves our confidence, happiness and overall mental wellbeing. The option is feeling resentment, feeling hard-done-by, deprived, regretful, sorry for ourselves, anxious, worried, lacking confidence, feeling defeated and depressed. A negative mindset is disempowering because it can make us feel stuck and unable to pull ourselves up. Changing our focus, no matter how hard it may be, to place more emphasis on all the good things in our past, present and possible future can give us more energy and motivation to tackle some of the problems we may be currently facing.
See also Feeling Fortunate