Emily Hottel King

I know, I know. It’s Thanksgiving Week here in the U.S. and everyone wants to talk about gratitude.

CEOs are posting about the importance of family and togetherness and how their employees are what makes their company great.

Your email inbox is probably full of thanks yous from retailers … with a handy Black Friday coupon code attached, of course.

I’m a little cynical about the way this holiday gets co-opted and yet here I am, doing the same damn thing. I’m going to tell you about gratitude and then tell you why you should hire me as your coach. So it’s not your fault if you rolled your eyes at the title.

It’s true, though: coaching has helped me understand gratitude in a very different and refreshing way. I’d always heard admonitions to cultivate an “attitude of gratitude” to be happy. I was told that wanting something more or different (a nicer house, faster car, bigger bank account, longer vacations, fancier office, etc.) would make me dissatisfied with my current circumstances. So in addition to feeling sad about what I didn’t have, I also felt guilty for wanting it, and pressured to put on a show of thankfulness to prove I wasn’t too ambitious or greedy.

Life coaching taught me that wanting something isn’t necessarily about that thing itself, it’s about the feeling I think the thing will give me. Life coaching also taught me that I am in charge of my feelings and can change them by changing my beliefs about the world.

So… if I can feel the way I want to feel by changing how I think…

And I just want that fast car or fancy office because I’m under the impression that I’ll feel differently if I have it…

Didn’t that mean I could just change my thoughts, change my feelings, and enjoy my life the way it was? No need for the upgrades?

Sure!

But I also have the option of deciding that I want to pursue those goals anyway, not because they’ll make me feel good but because I want to do something I haven’t done before and achieve things I didn’t think were possible. And while I’m doing that, I can choose thoughts that make me feel good about wherever I am in life and whatever number is in my bank account.

One of the first exercises I did when I discovered coaching came from an episode of the Life Coach School podcast. Brooke Castillo instructed listeners to write a list of 25 things they want, being sure to include things they already have on the list interspersed with the things they don’t have yet.

This exercise made me think about what I have in my life that I really want, and I realized that each of those things was once an unachieved goal. My list included things like a paid off car. A Corgi puppy. A pair of Doc Martens. A KitchenAid Mixer. A Coach handbag.

I remembered that having a desire for something gives me the opportunity to bring something beautiful into my life, and I realized that yearning for more is not what makes us unhappy, just like achieving our goals isn’t what will make us happy.

So I am thankful, both for what I have and for my desire to have more. The desire to try something new and different doesn’t make my current experience feel small and disappointing. Rather, it helps me see the wonder in where I am (because once upon a time I wasn’t here!) as I expand into the world.

My desire for a life that is bigger and brighter and wilder than I can imagine is what inspires me to learn and create and serve.

And that is what fills me with gratitude.