December 6 — Don’t Think
We don’t think our way into gratitude — we act our way into thinking grateful.
I heard a guy in a meeting once talk about “thinking positively” and how that made his whole day better. Good for him. Truly. Except that for someone like me — the real alcoholic described on page 21 — that whole approach is completely backwards. Sometimes, maybe I can do that, most of the time, nope.
If thinking positively could’ve kept me sober, grateful, sane, and stable I would have been sober years before I ever crawled into AA.
But no. That’s not how it works for a lot of real alcoholics.
Today I get to act myself into right thinking.
Not the other way around.
If I want to feel grateful, I don’t sit around waiting for gratitude to magically bubble up inside me. I act grateful — I help, I serve, I show up, I say yes when it’s inconvenient — and somewhere along the way the thinking catches up.
For too long in recovery I had it completely upside down and wondered why I was miserable. I kept talking about thinking gratitude, journaling gratitude, visualizing gratitude… and then trying to force myself to “feel” grateful afterward. It was spiritual cosplay.
Then a guy in a talk called me out — lovingly, but directly.
I was feeling the need to “think grateful” and he said something to the effect of, “Well good for you, kid. I wish I could do that. But it don’t work like that for the real alcoholic. Why don’t you go try to be of service to anybody right now, get out of your own head, and see what that gives you.”
And he was right.
I had it completely backwards for way too long.
I’m glad I don’t today.
What’s one small action you can take today that would create gratitude instead of waiting to feel it?
