Trap #14: You misunderstand what gratitude and forgiveness really mean

Trap #14: You misunderstand what gratitude and forgiveness really mean

The studies are in, and they’ve told us in no uncertain terms that both gratitude and forgiveness can provide major boosts to our mental health. You’ve probably heard how being able to forgive is associated with improved mental and physical well-being, and how gratitude meditations and practices can give even more significant boosts in terms of your happiness, fulfillment, and even life span.

But for many of us, being told to incorporate these practices into our daily life feels frivolous or even rings false. Who wants to be grateful when they’ve lost their job, or a loved one, or when they’re facing a significant health crisis? Who feels an urge to forgive someone who hurt them, when it set their life in a downward spiral they have yet to recover from? It can seem like a silly exercise at best. At worst, it can feel completely invalidating of the pain we are experiencing, and cause the most stinging of resentment.

It’s important that we broaden our definitions and understanding of what forgiveness and gratitude can mean. With forgiveness, we need not confine ourselves to the idea that it means that we’re okay with what was done to us, or that we’ve forgotten what has happened. Instead, reframe forgiveness as letting go of the need for revenge or making things even. Try to see it as helping free ourselves from the pain that the other person has caused us.

Interestingly enough, one way to do this is to send empathy to the person who has hurt us. We need not ignore or condone the way they’ve wronged us, but we can choose to acknowledge their own battles, their own weaknesses, and their own pain. And by attempting to send a healing thought to them — as counterintuitive as it may seem, and as difficult as it may be at first without practice — we can eventually begin to let go of our anger, and heal ourselves in turn. We will try it in a moment.

With gratitude, we can start simple. Gratitude is not a matter of ignoring your feelings of disappointment or resentment, telling yourself, “Be thankful it’s not worse. You have nothing to complain about.” It’s not about counting your blessings in order to stuff your sadness. Instead, true gratitude is about understanding the full depth of your experience. It involves looking for the big picture, understanding that even having your heart broken is a way of being alive. It’s about realizing that there are moments of beauty even in our darkest hours, that life can be messy and hurtful and dangerous and tear us apart sometimes, and yet that is all part of the privilege of being human. And to truly live, we must choose to be present for this chance we are given — even when it’s hard, scary, or sad, and even when we’d much rather turn away.

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