If you are like me, I am pretty ambitious and have set some scary goals for myself. Ever since I was a child, I had a curiosity for the world around me. It drove me to jump off the swing to see how far I could land, dig holes in the sand pit to see if I could get to the center of the earth, or make paper airplanes with friends to see who can fly theirs the furthest. Not a day would go by where I wouldn’t ask my mom and dad the question why? No answer they gave would satisfy my curiosity to know and explore more. 

Wanting to be better, striving to live optimally, and being hungry for more/better is what actually creates drive for each and every one of us. We live in a society that bombards us with messages that we don’t have enough, we are not enough, BUT if we have/buy/subscribe to this product/service THEN we'll be whole and complete. That’s why this message of gratitude is counter cultural in a sense. When we sit down and reflect on the things I’m grateful for, it tells our subconscious that who I am, what I have, and what I do is enough RIGHT NOW. Gratitude may seem to contradict our drive for more. No wonder it’s so hard to develop gratitude as a habit! It goes against the very message we’re bombarded with everyday. 

What then is the solution? This is where we must learn to embrace the paradox of BOTH/AND. Despite the initial discomfort, we must learn to embrace that ambition AND gratitude can co-exist! Growing up, things were very black and white. Our cartoons and messages told us there’s good vs evil, and one side is right and the other wrong. It made our world view much simpler and easier to understand but not fully accurate. Yet, there are always two sides to the same coin. One cannot exist without the other. In the same way, I would suggest that gratitude and discontent are actually two sides of the same coin. Without discontentment, we wouldn’t have the drive to create what we desire. If we didn’t create it, then we would not be able to be grateful for what we have. 

So here are the 3 simple steps to develop true gratitude as a habit:

1. Accept that everything valuable is held in tension through paradox.

2. Embrace the mantra “This is it, and I am fully satisfied.”

3. And… I am going for the more, better, different.

In this way you’ll see that drive and gratitude can exist in your life to propel you even further in a healthy way to live your optimal life now! 

This month, we talked a lot about gratitude and how to leverage it to become even better human beings. Next month, we’ll explore the concept of “giving” from a psychological perspective and I’ll talk about how it actually helps our mental and emotional health. Stay tuned!