Good morning everyone! Happy travel day! Whichever method you’re using to reach those family members is statistically supposed to give you a headache this year. So during your travels try some of those gratitude practices to make it suck less. Happy travels!

Today we’ll be cutting into a rather pessimistic topic, but important nonetheless. For our main course, we’re gonna be seeing how gratitude fits into life’s hardships and not just its comforts. To burn that off, we’ll be analyzing those hardships. To wrap it up with our Book Nook, we’ll take it easy by opening a little verse from Thessalonians. So if you’re reading this edition before heading out to your family, I wish you good luck. If you’re reading this on the plane or in the car, sit back and enjoy. Thought Breakfast is served!

Anyone can be grateful when life is warm, abundant, and stable. It’s easy to see things are going well when they are actually going well. But what happens to your gratitude when comfort disappears?

Cicero showed us how gratitude is the root of all the other virtues. Aurelius showed us that gratitude can only be found in the present. Today, St. Paul and Epictetus are going to show us how gratitude can still be the root of our virtue even when the present moment hurts.

If you’re a Christian or have ever been around a Christian prayer service, you might’ve heard something about the “letters of St. Paul.” It’s worth noting that he wrote those letters while he was in jail, where gratitude isn’t sentimental but resilient. In Philippians 4:11-12, St. Paul says, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.”

St. Paul is telling us that contentment and gratitude are learned postures, not emotional reactions. In our Book Nook, we’ll see how his phrasing is used to hammer down on this idea of gratitude in all circumstances. For now we can just see St. Paul’s gratitude as an internal posture, and not a response to external comforts. He’s saying that no matter what is happening around you, your attitude can be rooted and fortified in gratitude. Paul’s gratitude is more of a spiritual form of defiance. His attitude tells us “my circumstances don’t get the final say on the condition of my soul.”

Epictetus also gives us great insight on this. Another hero of the Stoics, he was a slave for most of his life. He actually knew intimately about hardship.

Epictetus captures this idea in the Enchiridion when he says, “Don’t seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that they happen as they do happen, and your life will go smoothly.”

This is another example that Stoic gratitude isn’t sentimental; it’s acceptance and strength. We may not choose what happens, but we can always choose the meaning that we assign to it.

The psychological implications of this are congruent with the philosophical idea as well. Gratitude in hardship increases our psychological resilience. We’re not denying the pain cause by external circumstances, but we’re actively preventing ourselves from identifying with that pain by practicing gratitude. This isn’t some type of golden-retriever-style “toxic positivity” but rather an emotional grounding. Instead of asking “why is this happening to me?” this type of gratitude prompts us to ask “How can I stand up within this moment?”

If you have nothing else, you still have air in your lungs and thoughts in your head, and we should be grateful just for that.

Identify something difficult in your life right now. Whether times are tough or you’re just hungry, pick a difficulty.

Ask yourself:

This thought exercise should redirect your gratitude from the situation you’re in to the self who endured this situation. Feel free to repeat this exercise if you have more than one difficulty on your mind.

We’re going to hand the mic back to St. Paul for today’s Book Nook.

St. Paul says, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Pay attention to Paul’s phrasing here. He says “in all circumstances” and not “for all circumstances.” The verse also doesn’t highlight the context. This was written to a persecuted church, not people sitting together at brunch (or thought breakfast).

The point isn’t to be thankful for our hardships because they “make us better.” While your modern alpha-male type guru’s might lead you down that path, that totally misses the point. You have to be thankful within your circumstances. This means enduring ownership of your attitude no matter what goes on around you. If you’re grateful for life when times are good, that’s half the equation.

When your gratitude for life persists through inconvenient or even awful circumstances, that’s where the true virtue lies.

Munch on that for today, and come back tomorrow for a steaming hot plate of Thought Breakfast before your steaming hot plate of Thanksgiving Dinner.

Thank you for reading along with us today! If you enjoy this content, and want to start your days grounded in thought and mindfulness, I suggest you have a seat at our table! Smash that button below to check out more editions and subscribe!

Remember to stay mindful, smell the flowers, and take it easy.

Chef Ricky - Thought Breakfast

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