The Terrible Cost of Ingratitude

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This month you hear more about gratitude than any other time of the year. With the holidays around the corner it is a great way to give us pause and go into the gift giving season with better motives. Gratitude is not a natural human response. When we are young we expect our needs to be met. We remain the center our own thinking until adolescence, where we first become aware of our connection to the world beyond our needs. That transition can come earlier with a lot of modeling from family and teachers. There are many factors that keep a child from developing a heart of gratitude, but as adults we can choose to grow in gratitude every day.

[Tweet “If you are an adult without a heart of gratitude, those close to you pay the emotional cost.”]

Lack of gratitude divides spouses, exhausts friendships, depresses children and cuts off opportunity for self advancement. There is a physical cost for ingratitude. Perhaps you are paying the price. Are you lacking deep connections the with people you love? Do your children tend to stay away when you have a day off? Does your husband comment that he can never do anything right? Can you think of other ways ingratitude has cost you?

Can we train ourselves to be more grateful?

I see so many posts about Thankfulness, but I have to ask, are we telling the right people we are thankful. I am thankful for many blessings, but not one of those has meaning outside of the context of my relationship with the people I love. I am thankful for my home, but empty, I would despise my vacant, lonesome home. I am thankful for coffee, but without the friends I often share it with, without my husband who makes the mornings fresh pot, it would be a incomplete joy.

Is the act of expressing gratitude for things, enough to shed an ungrateful countenance. Can you kill eleven months of unkindness with a feather and a marker, or is it is going to take more than one gratitude exercise around the Thanksgiving table to train your heart to recognize the need for gratitude. The important key is that you can see your need to make a shift. Joy is obtainable. Closer relationships, deeper intimacy, honesty, love are all things that you deserve, don’t let ingratitude rob you of the best things in life.

So the question remains, how can a person practice being grateful? In the next two posts I will talk about ways we can increase gratitude in our lives. While you wait for tomorrows post…

take the Porcupine 24 hour challenge:

Do not say anything negative for a 24 hour period.

For every criticism you have to start the 24 hour period over again. This is a great exercise to discover how your communication with people is perceived. If you feel like this is an area you really struggle with you can let your family or coworkers know you are taking the challenge and give them permission to help you. Agree on a hand sign or give them a post-it note they can stick on you when they feel you are being critical. Allow every warning. Awareness is the key to this exercise. We aren’t interested in asking if they are being oversensitive, if they don’t like you or if they are having a bad day, we want to know how others perceive us. If they see you as critical, then it is highly likely that you are.

Leave a comment and let me know how the challenge went for you.