Written by a human, for humans, always.
Have you ever watched people chase a goal?
It is part of an innate desire that we have as human beings...
A desire to grow.
But if you pay close attention...
You will discover that many people will reach a goal...
And the result?
They are unsatisfied.
Now, some will give up at that point...
But others will begin to continue to pursue more goals...
Yet...
They will run into the same problem.
Disappointment...
After disappointment...
Each time discovering that they are still...
Unsatisfied.
But...
Every once in a while...
There will be a different type of individual...
Who you will discover attain goal after goal...
And every time...
They are genuinely happy.
Fulfilled with what they have done.
These types of individuals often will move on to another goal...
To continue to fulfill that innate desire to grow...
But if they were unable to pursue another goal...
They would still be completely satisfied.
How is it...
That one person can chase
And chase...
And chase...
Never feeling satisfied along what feels like an endless journey?
While the other...
Moves forward...
Satisfied the entire way?
What is it that is different between these two types of people...
And why is it that so many find themselves in the first category...
Unsatisfied?
The answer has to do with an interesting aspect of psychology...
In this case...
Gratitude.
See...
The vast majority of people are not really grateful for what they have...
Which creates that feeling of being unsatisfied.
Their psychology then has an innate desire to fill the need to feel satisfied...
So they begin to chase...
Whatever they believe...
Or whatever they are told...
Will provide that satisfaction.
But here is the problem...
All the things they chase...
Never end up providing real satisfaction in their life.
Because satisfaction never comes from the attainment of something new.
Their lack of gratitude becomes like a bottomless hole...
That every time they throw something new into it...
The experience gets sucked into the void...
With the hole remaining.
Adding more does not fill up the hole.
So they reach a goal...
Which then simply becomes another thing that they are ungrateful for.
What becomes horribly ironic...
Is that the more they try to attain in this way of living...
The more they have to be ungrateful about...
Making it all the worse.
Gratitude is a state of mind that has nothing to do with what we attain or fail to attain.
We can be grateful for the good things...
But we can also be grateful for the bad.
This becomes the differentiator.
When you are ungrateful in your life...
You create a habit of being ungrateful...
And it creates a vicious cycle that perpetuates the problem...
Giving you more reasons to feel ungrateful.
But...
If you stop the chasing for a while...
And learn to feel gratitude...
For everything in your life...
The experience suddenly changes.
The hole becomes sealed...
And when your innate desire to grow drives you forward...
You will obtain more...
And you will feel more grateful.
The more that comes...
The more you will feel grateful.
But...
Vastly more powerful...
Is that when things go wrong...
Because things always go wrong at some point...
You do not lose that gratitude...
Which becomes a differentiator in a world filled with ungrateful people.
When you do not lose that feeling of gratitude...
What I have found is that more opportunities will come your way...
Which begins to design a virtuous cycle where you gain more things to have gratitude for...
And more opportunities are presented because you have shown yourself grateful.
This is why reaching the goal rarely provides what people hope for...
They are either completely ungrateful...
Or they are conditionally grateful...
And the conditions they place upon their gratitude reveal them to be selfish...
And in their selfishness...
Which they will usually deny...
They make themselves miserable and fail to experience true gratitude.
Why?
True gratitude is unconditional.
That is what most people fail to deeply understand in their lives...
And that is why they continue forward, unsatisfied with anything in their lives.
Are there times when we might be justified in feeling ungrateful?
Perhaps.
But it is a slippery road to allow whatever you could be justified in being ungrateful for to have the power to take away your entire future.
This is another key aspect of what is happening...
When we are ungrateful...
We typically also give our power over to other things.
We then are at the mercy of those other things.
But...
It is in choosing to be grateful in our lives...
That we also take ownership in our lives of what happens.
Agency.
The feeling that you have power in your life and are steering your own life.
This is one of the most powerful psychological forces we can experience.
Does this mean we control every factor in life?
Of course not.
But when we have agency...
We decide how we want to navigate what happens in life.
Like the captain of a boat...
There may be gigantic waves that appear in the ocean unexpectedly...
But as the captain, you have the ability to figure out how to navigate to calmer seas.
That is a power that most people do not feel like they experience...
And that is the power that you gain when you choose to be grateful in your life.
Now...
It does not necessarily make the harsh waves easy when they come...
But it allows you to keep your power.
What so many people do not see...
Is that agency in their lives is a choice...
Even in the worst of situations.
If you give your power over to others...
It is like handing control over your ship to another...
And they very well may throw you off the ship with only a piece of driftwood.
Do not give your power to others.
Take control of your life.
This starts by becoming grateful for your life...
All of it...
And when you do...
Suddenly, you will discover that all of life provides more than you hoped.
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