Too Bad, You Have To.
gratitude, whineassing, and cultivation theory
Let me start this post by saying that I used to fucking hate gratitude practices and resented every person that suggested them to me.
And I super-duper hate to be that person who starts preaching about gratitude after a traumatic loss, but I am that person and you are going to listen to me.
Having a gratitude practice is not just about noticing and appreciating the supportive, good things in your life. It’s about actively changing the lens through which we feel life. It’s incredibly easy at this moment in time to despair, fall to hopelessness, and wonder if that invisible, 300-pound vest we all seem to be wearing will ever get easier to carry. It’s easy to only think about how bad things are, easy to become cynical, easy to be persuaded by our nervous systems that Everything is Only Unsafe and Bad.
Having a gratitude practice helps to combat this, not only energetically, spiritually, and emotionally, but also physically. The feeling state of gratitude is not compatible with the feeling state of anxiety. Sometimes we think we’re doing both at the same time, but capital-G Gratitude is a physical sensation, not just a stream of thankful thoughts. It’s a flow with the life force of the universe, which becomes richer and deeper and more dimensional the more we love ourselves, forgive ourselves, and extend that energy outward.
Which isn’t to say that we don’t get to be whineasses. We absolutely do. Whineassing can be a great way to relieve emotional pressure, if that’s what we’re using it for. I think there is a difference between complaining and venting: complaining is when someone whineasses but they actually have power in the situation that they can’t or won’t exert, whereas venting is whineassing that releases built up emotional pressure and can help regulate us. Venting is in response to things that are outside of our control, or to the big emotions that precede courageous acts.
So there’s the pinch: we can be grateful and also whineass at the same time, but it takes some getting honest about what we have control over and what we don’t.
Another reason people often avoid focusing on what they’re grateful for is that it makes a lot of us feel guilty. Guilty for being sad or mad or whatever, as if we can’t still be sad or mad and grateful. Guilt is a helpful human emotion for when we do something wrong. It’s meant to be a temporary emotion that stimulates us towards repairing ruptures with our loved ones, because as a social primate species, we need to connect with one another in order to survive. So when we fuck up, a bit of guilt helps us to recognize the impact we had on someone and take accountability for it. It’s not supposed to be a long-term feeling state. Experiencing chronic guilt indicates the need for self-compassion and grace, the acknowledgment that fucking up doesn’t make us unlovable or bad. Constant guilt is a sign of perfectionism, and perfectionism is just supremacy trying to keep us from connecting with our authentic selves. So put that shit down.
Let’s also notice that we are drowning in media content, that media is a business, and that businesses want to make money. Unfortunately, good news doesn’t pay. Bad news (and conspiracy news), however, is extremely profitable, and therefore deeply incentivized towards the negative.
And listen, I’m not suggesting that horrific things aren’t actually happening: they are, of course they are.
“But so are a metric fuckton of good things, and we have to go out of our way to notice this. It requires work. Really, really necessary work.”
We’re being conditioned to be despairing, hopeless, and disempowered, and we have been for a very long time. In the 1970s (when TV had only been common in households for 20 years) , a communications professor named George Gerbner proposed a theory that the more violence we watch on a screen, the more scared we become in real life, and that the more time we spend with realities on the screen, the more we believe that real life aligns with what we’re watching.
This leads to “mean world syndrome,” a cognitive bias where we believe the world to be more dangerous than it really is. This doesn’t mean there isn’t danger, of bloody course there is. It means that we are actively being taught to be scared all the time, and we therefore have to intentionally interrupt this conditioning.
And, like, no judgement: I watch all the murder documentaries, too. This is not a criticism of our penchant for bad news, it’s a criticism of how American media weakens us with constant exposure to violent media, especially gun violence and propaganda-level-positive portrayals of the US military.
So how do we "cultivate” a more balanced view of the world? I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED.
Develop a gratitude practice. (See what I did there? Brought it back around.) If you don’t have the spoons for writing it down, that’s fine, but writing it down can help codify it in your mind. Just start by noticing what supportive things you have in your life - what makes you feel good? Who accepts you unconditionally? Do you have shelter, access to nourishing food and healthcare? A creative passion? Access to nature?
a. The key to gratitude is not just to list out the good in our lives, it’s to pause and be in the feeling state of gratitude. Take some long deep breaths low into the belly, close your eyes, and be present with how fortunate you are for what you do have.
b. Disrupt the idea that we’re all just going it alone. We aren’t. Unless you grow and harvest all your own food, sew all your own clothes, provide your own healthcare, and make every other physical object you have available to you, there are a lot of people involved in you being able to exist. We don’t have to have personal connections with each one of them but we can choose to be in gracious, enchanted awe for the invisible community that keeps each one of us alive. It’s not a mark of independence to invisibalize all the people that have ever helped us; it’s actually giving manifest destiny.
Practice slowing down enough to notice moments of beauty and wonder. Practice slowing down enough to experience moments of beauty and wonder. Let’s also stop telling ourselves that this would require some unmanageable amount of time: it doesn’t. We have 30 seconds to pause and appreciate something each day. One of the deepest secrets of life is that the more we slow down mentally, the more time we have physically.
Practice looking for signs of safety. We’re really good at recognizing signs of danger and many of us struggle with hypervigilance as a symptom of anxiety. So we can combat this by noticing the conditions of safety, like the literal fact that we are not currently being chased or chewed on by a predator. Or that we have access to food and clean water (if we do), that we have little pocket computers that can call an ambulance or someone we love, that we are protected from the elements. Start there and see how many other signs of safety pop up.
Yes, less media. Yes, less violent media. Refuse to participate in media that sensationalizes or fear-mongers. Seek out positive news stories, especially locally. In between murder documentaries, have a watch list of uplifting or regulating media, like kids’ shows (Avatar: the Last Airbender, Luca, Moana, the Dragon Prince, She-Ra), nature and science documentaries (hello David Attenborough, and also this), and stand-up comedy (Josh Johnson is my current obsession). Try not to watch really dark or activating shit right before bed, even if it doesn’t feel like it impacts your sleep.
Alongside the cognitive practice of paying more attention to good, practice the physical work of training your nervous system to calm down. Anxiety is a very persuasive liar: it wants us to believe that it’s keeping us safe by keeping us on guard, and that reducing our hypervigilance is the same thing as making ourselves more vulnerable. But this is a big stupid anxiety lie! When we’re scared, the part of our brain that does the best problem-solving, planning, and emotional regulation is dialed way down. When we’re calm, it dials way up.
In the event that our physical bodies were actually in danger, no amount of catastrophizing would make us respond better. The part of us (except for maybe those in the military with extensive training and conditioning) that responds to physical danger is automatic. The animal brain takes over, and the cognitive mind is switched off. Our anxiety is not actually keeping us safe.
Conserve your spoons but challenge yourself. You know where the line is, if you’re honest with yourself.
Be cringe, and notice that the aversion to being cringe is actually an aversion to vulnerability, but that vulnerability is how we connect authentically to others (and isn’t that what we’re all whineassing about wanting?). Risk emotional vulnerability and trust that you’ll be okay if you get hurt. So far, the evidence is that you have survived every hurt you’ve ever experienced. Notice that we have been culturally conditioned to perceive all forms of vulnerability as threatening, and disrupt this when you can. Learning to tolerate the discomfort of vulnerability opens us to self-compassion, which is the real liberator.
Send blessings - of love, of safety, of comfort, of abundance, of hope, courage, and grace. We can do this spontaneously or routinely. When you catch yourself in a downward spiral, switch your thoughts to sending blessings. (It may be hard to change your focus in the beginning, but with practice it gets easier) Blessings to the person you’re in conflict with, blessings to your lineage or ancestors, blessings to all the children in the world and their tired mothers, too, blessings to the bees, to the trees, to the rivers and the sweet earth. Blessings to those humans being treated like collateral damage, blessings to the lands that have received a nuclear weapon. What would those blessings look like if they came true? Picture it. Feel it.
Play. Relearn how to play, have light-hearted fun, and get absolutely fucking enchanted. Board games, hula hoops, sidewalk chalk, scavenger hunts, tutus, funny makeup, pillow forts, whatever you enjoyed as a kid! Extra points if no screens are involved.
It can be really hard to focus on gratitude, but that’s too bad - we have to. We don’t get to point to everyone else to do the work while we sit in our well-earned cynicism. The world is hard but it is also impossibly beautiful, and I can tell you from very personal experience that waiting for the world to hand us the beauty and pleasure is evidence that we are giving away our power somewhere.
I believe in us. I believe in you. I believe in this world. Let’s get to it.
