Recently, I was running and hit a very big hill. The whole way up, I was cursing the steep path and treacherous climb.
Once I got to the top of the hill, gravity changed and I got to experience the easy jaunt down. What's interesting is my pain of the climb up was way worse than my gratitude for the easy route down.
Why do we experience pain more heavily than we do
gratitude? In my case, the pain of the climb was constant and persistent while the graciousness of the retreat down was fleeting and hardly relevant.
Running is a relatively simple activity but the consider the impact this has on more complex parts of life. If we feel more deeply stressful or painful events and downplay the good ones, we rob ourselves of enjoying life's best moments.
There are thousands of
positive benefits to experiencing gratitude. Everything from decreased stress, prolonged feelings of happiness, better health and better relationships.
Funny motivational speaker and comedian, Louis C K has a brilliant comedy act called "Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy". Here he makes fun of the fallacy of downplaying good things and overemphasizing the bad ones.
This unhappy cycle keeps us trapped in negative thought patterns and robs us of joy in our life. The obvious reason we over emphasize stressful events is they require our time and attention to slog through them. The things we can have gratitude for we take for granted because they are easy.