This is a guest post from Stephanella Walsh. Stephanella writes about the creative process at The Creative Identity, tweets as @stephanellaw.
Earlier this year a friend of mine tried to articulate contrasting feelings which, it seemed to me, were rooted in her perceived lack of identity since the birth of her child. One thing above all struck me as she sobbed her way through our meeting: she felt that she should have been grateful for all she had and yet could not come to terms with the potent sense of inadequacy that had permeated her days since the euphoria of the first few months had petered out.
Over the past few years, we have witnessed a publishing trend that churns out countless guides which promise to reveal us secrets to happiness, wealth, health, in all their combinations thereof.
However, that which claims to reveal a great secret is often either presenting common sense re-packaged by a stellar marketing strategy or leaving us painfully aware that there is no secret after all and that we knew this stuff backwards anyway.
Gratitude, positive thinking, attraction, prosperity, secrets, powers are all terms that scream for our attention from bookshelves everywhere. While it is now unfashionable to call oneself Christian, Muslim, Hindu or whatever, throngs of devotees are out there putting thoughts to the universe, talking of manifesting and of intentions, of materialising a whole raft of things, while somewhere else forward-thinking authors are already penning books for those who are not manifesting enough, quickly enough, often enough.
Yet this movement rooted in the law of attraction discounts the true power we enjoy as individuals: free will channeled through action.
It is not the mere thinking about the job, the house, the holiday, the lawn or the cruise that will materialise them out of the blue sky; it is our actions towards the goal that turn possibility into reality.
The staunchest supporters of this pseudo-science claim that people who die in natural disasters, wars, terrorist attacks must all have been on the same thought frequency (as Byrne states in The Secret) and yet this is an insult to intelligence. To suggest that people encounter grievances because their thoughts have summonsed them is Medieval hocus pocus that values denial of reality above acknowledgment of, and response to, it. Hardship turns up at our door uninvited and unannounced, breaking bread with bad people and with good people too.
It’s called life.
This artificial dichotomy between gratefulness and adversity would be more effectively addressed if we allowed ourselves to admit to weakness and fear, and if we accepted, rather than implicitly denied, that we are human beings, not transmissi
on masts beaming subliminal messages into the sky. This does not logically translate into a lack a spine and stamina or into bleak paranoia which holds hands with depression.
Pure gratitude, the one for which we need no thank you journals, no happiness diaries, no fake checkes, no marketing gizmos, is the one that allows us to embrace our selves when we need it the most; when, stripped bare of everything else, our sense of self remains intact, sustained by the realization that life may not come wrapped up with a bow but is still a gift.
It is now near impossible to state facts in certain circles without being accused of being negative or of being told that we should learn a lesson from it. However, there is a fundamental difference between negativity and factuality: the former thrives on skepticism and denial (and lingers), while the latter acknowledges reality, usually sits on it for a while and then moves on.
It is the forced movement of gratefulness that is rooted in denial. When we disconnect from our feelings in favour of a mantra that has no correlation with our emotional state, we are more likely to amplify our sense of inadequacy. I find Julia Cameron’s persuasion about anger (from The Artist’s Way) more likely to help us get back on our feet when all else has fallen to pieces: ‘
Anger is to be respected.
Why? Because anger is a map. Anger points the way, not just the finger. [...] We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us’. In other words, if you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you. This is radically different from claiming that I can bend a spoon with my thoughts. I have no doubts I will bend a spoon, but I’d rather use my hands.
What are your thoughts? Do you think we’re being short-changed by gratefulness? I’d love to hear your perspectives.
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Stephanella Walsh has defined the constituents of our creative identity for her workshops and eCourses. She writes about the creative process at The Creative Identity, tweets as @stephanellaw, has a degree in English and has completed a PhD in critical theory and cultural studies. She is the author of the forthcoming Slaughter is the Best Medicine and lives in Manchester, England.
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