For nearly my entire life, the gratitude that I felt was a form of settling for what I had, and I tried not to want anymore for myself.

There was a nagging voice in my head whispering, “You should be grateful.”

After I returned from trekking and camping in Nepal for a week, I was on a business trip in South Beach, Miami. “My bathroom has hot water! My bathroom has a flushing toilet! I have a bed to sleep in!” But my hotel was on Ocean Avenue with open air windows (no screens) with access to a fire escape ladder that led to an inner courtyard, and a sketchy lock on the door, and I didn’t feel safe. “But I should be grateful,” I told myself.

This same feeling showed up in relationships. I would be with someone that I was initially attracted to because they were really “good” to me, or because they paid attention to me. They treated me well, they seemed to be nice guys. Other people liked them. But after awhile I noticed that they were projecting their own insecurities onto me, or they were narcissists or I would simply lose interest. And my mother would always say to me, “It’s better for someone to be in love with you than for you to be in love with someone.” And that nagging thought of “I should be grateful that this man likes me, that he’s expressed interest in me, that he’s attracted to me.”

My first memory of hearing that I should be grateful was when I was a little girl. I had just climbed into my seat at the dinner table and with all of the courage of a 6-year-old, I said to my father, “I didn’t like a daddy who drinks,” meaning, I didn’t like it when he got really drunk.

He stopped eating. “What did you say?”

I repeated, “I don’t like a daddy who drinks.”

He told me to go over to the couch and wait for him. He returned with his leather belt. He was a six-foot tall giant, looming over me as I lied on my stomach, and he whipped my bottom with a leather belt for what seemed like forever. I didn’t count the whippings. I remember that’s when I disconnected from my body. I floated above, watching the scene. I saw my mother sitting on the stairs, watching with tears streaming down her face. And I had tears too.

Then my father took me for a walk in the neighborhood in Manila, Philippines. And he told me, “You should be grateful for everything that you have. That you don’t have to work in the rice fields earning a dollar a day like the children in the countryside where I work, that you don’t have to pick cotton under the hot sun like I had to when I was a boy, that you get to go to an international school when a lot of other children don’t have access to a good education like you do, that you live in a big house.”

So that’s where it started.

I should be grateful for a lot. But I’m not. When it’s the should be grateful, it’s usually because I’ve lowered my standards or my expectations. I accepted mediocrity. Average. It’s not even about perfection. It hasn’t even come close to my desires, or my vision. It’s a limp noodle.

The thoughts,
“You’re expectations are too high.”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. Or on others.”
“At least he made an effort.”
“You’ll grow to like it.”
“It was on sale.”
“It’s a bit too big but that’s ok, better than being too tight.”
“Let go of attachment to the outcome. Let go of the results, it’s all about the journey.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“It’s good enough.”

Sometimes those sayings may be true.

But sometimes it’s bullshit.

It’s bullshit if it requires you to compromise and settle for mediocrity. Or people who don’t treat you with the respect and honor that you deserve as a human being.

When I feel true gratitude, it wells up inside me, and almost brings me to my knees. It feels humbling. It’s an overwhelming knowing that there is something greater than myself at work. Thank you.

If you’re creating something and need to get it out in the world, it may fall short of your standards, but there’s value in releasing it before it’s ‘perfect’ when you know that you can refine it later. So there could be a, “Well, it wasn’t perfect, but I’m grateful that I did the work and we sent it out and we’ll go back to the drawing board if we have to.”

Here’s how I can tell the difference:

1. If it’s a “should be grateful,” it feels constricting, a tightness in my chest, a sense of giving up, a sense of disappointment. Possibly, a sense of shame is lingering there too.
2. It it’s true gratitude, tears well up in my eyes and I want to jump for joy too. It feels honest, humbling and expansive. Soaring but grounding at the same time.

How do you recognize the “I should be grateful” vs. true gratitude in your body? Share below.