Thanks giving, for everything

What to do when gratitude goes stale

This week, Americans gather with their families to celebrate Thanksgiving. While the origins of this tradition are debatable, one of the core themes of this holiday that I really appreciate is the focus on gratitude. The practice of giving thanks.

Most new age seekers and personal growth enthusiasts are pretty familiar with the practice of gratitude by now. It’s a drum that every transformational life coach and Instagram influencer has probably beaten at some point or another. I know I have.

I have kept a daily gratitude journal throughout certain phases of my life, with some attention on trying to build the healthy reflex to regularly count my blessings.

When I was doing this practice regularly, the list of things that I am grateful for would start to feel repetitive after a while, and my deeper connection to the felt sense of appreciation would eventually go flat. My gratitude practice slowly became a chore of reciting rote remembrances: I’m grateful for my healthy body. I’m grateful for my comfortable home. I’m grateful for the support of my family and community.

And blah blah blah and so on. Can anyone else relate to this? You see how this sort of gratitude practice can get stale pretty quickly.

The perspective shift that has most meaningfully transformed my gratitude practice, is learning the art of saying thank you for the things that are not obvious to be grateful for. In other words, saying thank you for everything. Not only saying thank you for the blessings, but also saying thank you for the lessons.

Here are a few examples of giving thanks for things that we might not see the silver lining in immediately:

• Thank you for this pain, which activated me to search for deeper healing

• Thank you for this trauma, which rocket launched a major transformation

• Thank you for this suffering, which revealed the true depth of my resilience

• Thank you for this heartbreak, which showed me that I will never leave me

• Thank you for this disappointment, which shook me out of my habit of controlling

• Thank you for this rejection, which deepened my trust in the unseen plan

• Thank you for this betrayal, which cleared out misaligned opportunities

• Thank you for this injury, which made me slow down to take better care of myself

• Thank you for this obstacle, which let me realign my path with more integrity

• Thank you for this loss, which grew my appreciation for what is here now

Thank you, for everything. Because everything can be for our benefit, ultimately.

The purpose of this practice is not to bypass the negative emotions or wounding that comes from facing unfortunate life circumstances. We can still deeply feel our feelings, acknowledge them and embrace them. It’s wonderful to honor the honest human struggle in moving through emotional intensity.

And, while respecting the difficulty we sometimes face in this journey of human-ing, we might discover that the practice of saying thank you for everything is a practice of alchemy. It helps us transform the potent energy from intense experiences into foundation blocks for life building.