The Grate Challenge

Why is it such a challenge to be grateful to God?

Personally, I find it puzzling why I myself find it so difficult to be grateful enough for all the freedoms and opportunities life offers. In a post from about 1.5 yrs ago; Grate I questioned whether or not we should be grateful, and the reasons why. Considering basic existence as an option to experience positives throughout life is virtually incalculably better than complete lack of existence and chance, it seems pretty reasonable to be grateful. A lot of what we perceive as negative, is in reality only a lack of positive, as I mentioned in a post from before that 1; Positive Reinforcement Perception Relativity. Yet why does keeping these perspectives in mind seem so challenging?

I considered similar concepts in a post from 2.5 yrs ago; Contendment for Contentment, that being content is difficult because our ability to consciously comprehend prospects of alternate positives often leaves us over-focused on the past, future, or what others have. 

Differently than being content, the term “gratefulness” usually insinuates comprehending the cause of something. Regarding the aspect of God for this topic, perhaps the difficulty of being grateful is also extenuated from a lack of comprehension of what God causes, as well as comprehension of the benefits of our existence relative to the potential contrary. A misunderstanding of God and these concepts of the benefits of existence could lead to a negative perspective of blame towards God. In my last post; Author of Authority, I considered the immense complexity of circumstances and effects which are often far beyond our awareness. To be more grateful to God, it might help to include in our comprehension of God, our acknowledgement of our own lack of awareness of circumstances. With acknowledgement of this can be included God’s authority to cause or allow various circumstances, including all potential positives of life. 

Adding to the difficulty of keeping the perspective of gratitude, it seems to be natural and common to feel entitled. As I covered in a post from almost 2.5 yrs ago; Titled, but not Entitled, we may often assume we deserve more positives in life. This could be because of various status’ someone might have, or regarding God, feeling entitled could be yet again from a misunderstanding of Gods function. Bringing back the concept of over focusing on other positives, if we assume others have more positives from God or we should have more from God, this sense of entitlement can potentially result even in resentment. To avoid this, it should help keeping in mind the counter to this, that our existence or even accomplishments do not mean we deserve anything, since credit for existence, or anything we have the opportunity to accomplish thereafter, goes to God. 

It seems to be our instinct and subconscious steering perceptions of entitlement and ungratefulness. I hypothesized more detail of how instinct and subconscious can steer the mind, in another post from about 1.5 yrs ago; Mind Driver. As it may be with a lot of problems, if the subconscious is steering thoughts in a dispreferable direction, the best option is likely to consciously condition your subconscious in a more preferable direction, as I covered in a post from about 4 yrs ago; Conscious Conditioning. 

For application of this, to being grateful, conscious comprehension has to be aware of this overall concept (perhaps through writing or reading this), then consciously consider it significant enough to be triggered in memory in the future. If it’s triggered, then consciously choose to analyze and be aware of various aspects of positives of which to be grateful for. If this is effective at causing positive reinforcement, the subconscious will be more inclined to take this direction in the future. Through conscious repetition, can result habituation, and preferable alteration of the subconscious to be more Grateful. 

Hopefully the understanding that any positives we do have in life are a huge blessing (compared to lack thereof), and that focus is better directed on those positives, than potentials, can be a potential solution to; The Grate Challenge.