The Antidote to Complacency
Hedonic adaptation is the gratitude killer
Be grateful! Gratitude! Do your gratitude list! Gratitude is the attitude!!
*puke*
Someone once said to me, “I feel so grateful every day! I just think life is amazing! I’m so grateful I get to wake up in my bed each morning! It’s just amazing.”
I stared at them and thought about it. I didn’t want to be rude but I responded honestly, “I have trouble accessing that feeling a lot of the time.”
They were shocked! I don’t think they ever heard someone admit it. We’re all so rooted in the expectation that we’re so lucky to have what we have. And we’re SUPPOSED to be grateful, but … do we really feel grateful all of the time? I sure don’t.
Gratitude lists can help. I guess it is really nice that I have a great bed and a roof over my head and food to eat and people I can call if I need to talk to someone. It’s pretty interesting that I’m alive.
But a lot of days I don’t feel deeply connected to this feeling of gratitude. Then I get stressed out! How am I going to manifest my way out of this feeling if I can’t access gratitude for it! Oh nooooo. And then the woe-is-me misery really starts!
My theory is that if you have experienced trauma, and if you have C-PTSD or PTSD, you have trouble really connecting to feeling things unless they’re extreme. The day-to-day gets to be ho-hum and complacency sets in. A general feeling of malaise is normal in this case, and just a symptom of the intensity of the trauma you experienced. If you grew up in an unstable environment, you are used to dramatic ups and downs, and anything else might just feel… blah.
Another reason that gratitude might feel far away is a concept called hedonic adaptation. This is the reality that when you focus on the material reality as a way to get high, you eventually build up a tolerance for wherever you currently are. If you are driving a Honda and you want a Lambo, you’ll feel high once you have it - but, only for a little while. Eventually driving it will start to feel just the same as it felt like driving your Honda. What happened?
Assuming that acquiring material things will keep you in an elevated state is an inherently flawed assumption. You will adapt and you will become used to everything you have. This is why rich people are so disconnected. It doesn’t make them evil, they just have no idea that things really are more difficult for other people. In their minds, life is difficult for them too! Often times, they actually feel the same way as materially poor people feel, because they got used to the things and they can’t hold that feeling of gratitude.
The antidote to both of these problems is to be present in the current moment. You don’t need to be grateful for the car you drive or the money in your bank account. Your gratitude doesn’t need to be for the physical reality at all. Instead, focus on the gratitude of this moment. The strange sensations in your body, the way that you feel differently than you’ve ever FELT before in your life! The clothes you’re currently wearing, the colors and environment you can currently feel.
From the higher realms, THIS is what your soul is totally and completely stoked about. Your lived experience is RICH and filled with strange and unique experiences that cannot be had at any other moment in time, or by anybody else. You alone get to be you. You alone are doing whatever you’re doing right now. That is your true abundance!
If you still feel shame for not being grateful check out this article I wrote:
