The Spiritual Practice of Gratitude: Beyond Positive Thinking

The Spiritual Practice of Gratitude: Beyond Positive Thinking I’ve had people come to me over the years, their faces etched with a kind of desperate hope, and they say, “Paul, I’m trying...

The Spiritual Practice of Gratitude: Beyond Positive Thinking I’ve had people come to me over the years, their faces etched with a kind of desperate hope, and they say, “Paul, I’m trying to be grateful.

I’m saying my affirmations, I’m making my lists, but my life is still a mess. What am I doing wrong?” They’re often frustrated, feeling like they’ve been sold a bill of goods, a spiritual snake oil.

And I get it. I really do. The modern world has a tendency to take the most deep spiritual truths and turn them into bite-sized, marketable concepts. Gratitude has become one of those.

It’s been packaged and sold as “positive thinking,” a way to simply slap a happy sticker on top of our pain. But that’s not gratitude.