Practicing Gratitude is Bullshit

Gratitude practice is bullshit.

For the last dozen or so years, one of the biggest and most pervasive mental-health memes has been that one should maintain a gratitude practice in order to optimize their mental and even physical health. What they mean by this is things like gratitude journals, where you wake up every morning or before you go to bed at night and write down in your leather bound journal what you are grateful for. Or you sit and stare at a wall or a sunset or some flowers and speak out loud to no one in particular about just how grateful you are for your health, your new car, your job, or whatever else is prompting this.

But the problem with all this so-called gratitude practice is that it is meaningless. It actually doesn’t give you any real, lasting, measurable health benefits to say the words “I am grateful for [whatever].” It might give you a momentary boost to your mood. Actually, I take that back. The biggest argument for “practicing gratitude” is to remind yourself not to take what you have for granted. But even then you have to do it constantly, because that is what humans do: we take things for granted. We get accustomed to stimuli, and we reach homeostasis incredibly quickly. No matter how good you have it, you are going to get used to what you have, and you are going to take things for granted.

Besides, it’s not like gratitude is emergent in these gratitude people. They aren’t going into their “practice” because they feel so much gratitude and need to express it. They’re doing it because some influencer on IG told them it could improve their serotonin and dopamine levels. If you actually feel an immense groundswell of gratitude flooding your body and it just “comes out,” sure, that’s probably useful. Especially if you express it someone who deserves it and not just your drywall.

And that’s the real power. The true gratitude practice you should be following is not giving gratitude out into the ether, but receiving gratitude from others to whom you have rendered a service or with whom you’ve developed a relationship. There is even research showing that having others practice gratitude toward you is where the real benefits lie. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Because if someone is grateful toward you, that means you have done something for them. You actually have to work to earn someone’s gratitude. Good deeds. Whereas if you are just giving gratitude to no one in particular for the hell of it, that’s cheap and easy. That’s junk food for the soul. You’re not actually doing anything to earn it, and that is why there’s no real benefit.

I was just at two health conferences last weekend. At each one, no fewer than 10 people came up to me wanting my time not for advice, but to tell me the story of how my work has changed their lives. I am often busy at these conferences, running from one meeting or one speaking engagement to the next. But I always stop to listen to the story, because it is a gift that these people are giving back to me for my having had, in some cases, a profound impact on their lives. Receiving gratitude in that form creates such an emotional high for me, and as distracted as I am at these events, I try to be as fully present with the person telling me the story as I possibly can be. In doing so, I am often moved to tears in the moment.

Not much moves me to tears these days. It’s hard to get there, particularly as a man. When you do, that’s a sign that you are doing something right. That you have entered a space of great meaning.

If you want to get into gratitude, stop thinking of it as “practice.” You want the real thing. You want to do nice things for the people you love. You want to provide incredible services that cause people to give thanks and feel gratitude for what you’ve given them.

As for giving gratitude, if you’re going to do it, give it to someone. Don’t waste your time writing in a journal or talking to the trees. Give it to someone who can actually respond, who can feel the gratitude.

If you’re reading this in time for Thanksgiving dinner, and everyone’s going around saying what they’re thankful for, make sure to single out at least one person present when it’s your turn. Tell that person why you’re grateful for them, rather than something ephemeral or intangible. Make it real, and see what virtuous cycle or giving and receiving gratitude you trigger.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Thanks for reading.