two reframes of gratitude

In a podcast episode with Mo Gawdat, Greg McKeown offers a couple of very slight edits to the definition of gratitude. 

The wannabe poet and grammarian in me thrills to these edits. He tweaks a preposition and a whole ecology of meaning flowers out of the phrase.

My summary of his edits:

• The first reframe: Gratitude isn’t being grateful for the good things. It’s being grateful for everything.

• The second reframe: When you’re grateful, you don’t think about things happening to you. You think about things happening for you.

I was tempted at the beginning of the interview to swat the whole thing away. Airy pop psych. Woof. 

McKeown offers these reframes, though, through the story of his adolescent daughter’s terrifying neurological condition. If there’s a truth he’s caught hold of here, it’s in a hand that blistered to calluses.

-Eric