Permission to be ungrateful.

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It’s become wildly popular to tell people how grateful they should be.

If you tell someone that you feel stuck in your career, they’ll tell you that millions of people would kill for your job. If you admit your marriage feels empty, a friend might tell you to appreciate what you have. If you confess that your life feels small, randoms on the internet will convince you to start a gratitude journal.

Be grateful, focus on the good, and remember to count all of your blessings.

And if you’re still unhappy after all that gratitude? Well, that’s a you problem.

Unfortunately, I feel like gratitude is often weaponized against people who want more from their lives.

Gratitude is a feeling, not an obligation. It’s not a performance you’re supposed to put on to prove you’re not selfish or entitled or broken.

But, still, we perform.

We write in our journals every morning. We list three things with our partners before bed. We post about our blessings on social media and perform gratitude like it’s a personality trait that makes us better than everyone else.

But gratitude can become a cage.

When you’re told to be grateful for a job that’s killing you, gratitude keeps you trapped. When you’re reminded to appreciate a relationship that makes you lonely, gratitude prevents you from walking away. When people tell you to focus on what you have instead of what you want, gratitude becomes the reason you never change anything.

I spent the last two years of my corporate life writing gratitude lists every morning, even as my life was falling apart around me.

Grateful for the money, the title, and the respect that came with the position. I wrote down three things every single morning for over 700 days in a row.

And then I’d go to work and feel absolutely nothing. Just an overwhelming emptiness that no amount of journaling could fix.

Gratitude wasn’t making me happier. It was just making it easier to ignore that I was objectively unhappy.

Real gratitude doesn’t come from forcing yourself to appreciate things that make you miserable. It comes from contrast. From finally walking away from something that wasn’t working and running toward something that does.

I’m grateful now. Genuinely grateful for my life and work.

But I wasn’t when I was working 70-hour weeks. I was completely dissatisfied. And no amount of gratitude journaling was going to fix that. I needed to be dissatisfied enough to actually do something about it.

The people who are most grateful for their lives are often the ones who were willing to be completely, honestly ungrateful first.

They finally stopped pretending everything was fine and actually did something about it.

The same people who tell you to be grateful for your life and work are often the ones who’ve never actually taken a real risk. The folks preaching gratitude for your “comfortable situation” are usually the ones most afraid of change.

They need you to stay grateful because your dissatisfaction threatens their choices.

Maybe it’s time to stop performing for them.

And give yourself permission to be a bit ungrateful.

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Today’s topic was an odd thought that occurred to me the other day. How did it land? Do you agree, disagree, or is there something I missed?

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