How to Cultivate Actual Gratitude in the Face of Post-Holiday Excess
Contrary to popular belief, gratitude cannot be practiced. The practice of naming all the things we are grateful for and focusing on all the ways things could be worse is great for mitigating the worst aspects of so-called "first world problems." It's great for not being a tone deaf ass, keeping our privilege in perspective, and right-sizing our misery or self imposed suffering relative to issues like being unable to meet basic needs. I'm not saying we shouldn't do that. Keep doing that, especially if you’re not very exposed to socio-economic inequality and are still learning the extent of your privilege.
But this kind of “gratitude practice” isn’t real gratitude. We rarely feel actual, honest-to-god gratitude when we force ourselves to focus on our blessings and privileges and all the ways other people have it worse than us. This kind of forced gratitude more often loops into guilt. And guilt is not gratitude. Guilt does not allow us to benefit from privilege and abundance ourselves, which means we cannot access generosity. So rather than creating generosity of spirit towards others (knowing we have way more than enough) or inviting us to relish the security and fulfillment of having absolutely everything we could ever want, forced gratitude keeps us stuck in overwhelm, shame, dissatisfaction, and insatiability. Forced gratitude is a function of the hungry ghost that lives inside of those of us residing in the belly of the beast that is consumer-colonizer culture, like some kind of monstrous Russian nesting doll.
These frameworks themselves (privilege, consumer culture, colonization, socio-economic inequality) illicit shame and guilt, and for many people cause defensiveness or the impulse to double down on their fragile self image that they have (more than) enough because they are “good” or “worked hard to earn what they have” or “did everything right.” However, if we happen to find ourselves as one of very, very few people (perhaps only person) in our family or community that took one for the team and was able to go ALL the way into our completely unearned privilege, we might want to loosen our grip a bit on these frameworks.
Feeling those feelings of shame and pain about having more than we need when others don’t have enough, is a normal healthy empathetic human response to the gross unfairness and exploitation of a system that functions to protect corporate greed and maintain power structures literally destroying the planet (no big deal). At the same time, we’re just one person. And here we are, doing the best we can in a system we inherited, making choices and developing philosophies, worldviews, and ethics the best we can within the belly of the beast and the random circumstance of our birth.
As a person who doesn’t take it personally that I’m privileged AF but also doesn’t take for granted I was born spiritually bankrupt, I find that it’s much more realistic and effective to acknowledge the profound and important difference between abundance and excess. And I find that, contrary to popular belief, temperance is not deprivation, moralization of self control, or villainization of “hedonistic” impulses. For privileged people, temperance is what allows us to heighten pleasure and access satiation and contentment.
So here’s the groundwork for welcoming new objects into your home after the holidays, even when you’re feeling like an inner mess around all your stress, overwhelm, and guilt for “not being grateful”:
If excess prevents us from knowing abundance, eliminate the excess. It’s ideal to declutter your house during fall cleaning or right before the holidays, but right after the new year is better late than never and has the added benefit of informing your decluttering choices based on the new stuff that came in. Decluttering can trigger a scarcity mindset, especially if you grew up poor, have a history of housing instability, your ancestors were poor, or you just survived a natural disaster, etc. So you can work with a decluttering support specialist (like me!) if you find that you need some guidance, self awareness, and co-regulation during that process. But there are also TONS of decluttering videos on YouTube that can serve a similar purpose.
Neurodivergent people sometimes feel like their objects have a personality (which makes sense, because animism is normative consciousness, s/o Josh Schrei) and can struggle to let them go. Likewise, people coping with the effects of trauma and grief may have more intense emotional entanglements with their objects, and find that their behavior falls somewhere on the spectrum of hoarding behavior. This might require therapeutic support or neuro-affirming, trauma informed support from a domestic service professional (like me!). But if you don’t have the funds for that, books, podcasts, and other forms of teaching can be effective as well.
Although gratitude cannot be practiced, relationality can. We are in a relationship with place, space, home, housekeeping, and objects. Ideally, we want every object in our home to either be our FAVORITE THING, or provide a really valuable function and purpose. Beyond that, we can decide what kind of objects bring us joy. Some people love clothes, some people love their Star Wars paraphernalia collection, some people love teapots…be sure to respect your family member’s preferences too. Loving and respecting someone means loving and respecting the presence of their stuff. (obviously there are complexities here as well).
So if you have a FAVORITE THING, like a perfect sweater, practice paying attention to why you love it, how you relate to it, and all the value it brings to your life. Zero in on its function (it keeps me warm! it’s so cozy and regulates my nervous system!) and form (it’s so cute and flattering and reflects my personal style!). Treat the sweater like a person you’re in an intimate relationship with. Tell it THANK YOU for stabilizing your identity, holding memories, and making you feel at ease in your body. Mourn its loss and appreciate all the good life you lived together when it’s time to let it go.
Pay attention to the way temperance and simplification enhance pleasure and purpose. Let me be clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong or inferior about maximalism, healthy levels of hedonism, accidental over indulgence, vegging out, or even just not being in a place where you don’t have any desire or ability to drop vices and coping mechanisms. We develop coping mechanisms for a reason: they help us cope! We need coping mechanisms, until we don’t need them anymore and they stop working. Be puritanical about anti-puritanicalism. Playing in the extremes is useful, yet super obnoxious. Lifestyle achievements are not indicative of personal growth, strength of character, or heightened consciousness.
BUT/HOWEVER, there are always these tiny moments we can create for ourselves where we orient towards beauty, pleasure, and delight. And de-sensitization is just as real as re-sensitization. Moments like clearing the kitchen table, making a cup of tea, and neatly sorting the paperwork for our taxes can become a powerful practice in creating the conditions for a desired state (like peace and contentment) to arise.
If you can commit to all three of these foundational approaches over a long period of time (forever, ahem), you will be amazed at your growing ability to access true gratitude. Happy New Year!
