Gratitude comes in hard and soft

jasonleow  •  9 Feb 2021   •    
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Part of the benefits of being in the Atomic Habits Facebook group is that you do come across gems pretty often. Yesterday I was schooled in the technique of “2 soft 1 hard” exercise of expressing gratitude. Sounded like a meal of eggs, but stay with me.

In the author’s own words, this is what hard and soft gratitude means:

Hi Jason - a soft gratitude is an easy one - for example, “I grateful to be alive and healthy today.” - a Hard Gratitude is being grateful for something difficult or painful in your life - for example, “I am grateful for my depression as it helps me to really appreciate the simple moments of today.” - this is a great approach to transforming your negative (passive helplessness) to some pain or trauma of the past to something better (growth).

That’s just beautiful. Perhaps that’s why I always felt gratitude exercises didn’t work for me, because it often comes in the soft variety, and comes across as contrived or theatrical, or just fuzzy feel-good without much substance. Perhaps I have a bit of the masochistic streak of wanting tough lessons and growing through adversity. So this “2 hard 1 soft” seems to gives a nice balance to it (for me). Two bitter pills of hard gratitude to learn from adversity, and one soft gratitude to close the palette, like dessert.

So what’s my two hard, one soft for now?

  1. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be in a financially challenging situation recently. It’s helping me re-examine my relationship with money and to grow beyond my infantile perceptions.

  2. I’m grateful for the difficulties in this new season of my life, juggling between parenting, sleep deprivation, work and health. The beauty of constraints is that it really made me pare down everything down to the absolute essential. I used to pride myself in being quite minimalist in lifestyle, but I ain’t seen nothing yet till this season came along.

  3. I’m grateful that I still get to do what I love, and have a family as my emotional and spiritual anchor.

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