Gratitude Journaling for Misanthropes

What to write when you hate everything.

You don’t have to be a true misanthrope to benefit from this article. We’ve all had those days, weeks, months, or more where we feel like there’s nothing to be grateful for — when it seems the whole world has conspired against us.

Even if this isn’t you, hate gratitude, as I’ve started to call it, is a great skill to develop even when you’re a naturally thankful and bubbly person. This has quickly become the main way I use the gratitude section of my journal.

It’s easy to be grateful for things going your way. It’s hard to be grateful for the lessons learned from things we hate. When you learn to do this, it’s a transformative experience.

The Concept

The concept is simple. I always write down at least one thing I’m grateful for each morning. At first, it was easy: my spouse, financial security, a family that loves me, my dog, and so on.

Then it got hard, and I started to resort to the mundane: a good cup of coffee, clean water, etc. It’s good to find a way to be grateful for the things we take for granted. This is one of the things people often cite about their gratitude practice. They tend to notice the small stuff and appreciate it.

If you want to take this to the next level, though, try to find something every single day that you dislike or even hate, and find a reason to be grateful for it. I can’t express enough how much this has changed my outlook on life.

Now, whenever something comes up that annoys me, my brain has developed a habit of trying to find something good in it. It immediately lessens the pain. It calms me in stressful moments.

There are people that believe everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe that, but I think this attitude is similar. You don’t have to blindly accept hardships. It’s like the serenity prayer says: we should accept the things we cannot change and have the courage to change the things we can.

Acceptance is easy when you find a good reason to accept it.

There’s even science to support the benefits of a gratitude practice. You can nitpick and disagree if you want, but my guess is that as more results come in, our understanding of how and why it works will clarify.

Examples for Inspiration

I’ll give you two examples — one minor and one major — to help you see what I’m talking about.

Running in Silence

One day, while training for a half marathon, I got up early to go for a long run. It was going to be over an hour, so I queued up a bunch of podcasts to keep me entertained on it.

I set everything out the night before and charged the batteries to be ready. Except that when I went to pick up my earbuds, I saw that they were sitting next to the charging chord, depleted.

I was so mad at myself for forgetting to plug them in. It was early morning in the summer and it would be too hot for the long run if I waited until later. I needed to go if I was going to do it, but the thought of running for over an hour in silence sounded agonizing.

Now, there are a ton of “cheap” ways to turn this into a positive. I could have thought: at least I’m privileged enough to have things like BlueTooth earbuds; at least I have legs to run on.

If you’re new to gratitude, these are great! But I’ve used these too many times over the years, and so I like to dig a little deeper. It feels like cheating to turn every negative into an “at least I have [INSERT COMMON OBJECT HERE].”

Yes, we should all be grateful for the physical things we own and each functioning body part. There are plenty of people who do not have those things. But that’s not exactly finding a new thing to be grateful for each day.

Instead, I stood there and tried to feel grateful that I had an opportunity to go for a run in silence. I took the part that I hated the most, and tried to make that the thing I felt gratitude for.

It was a nice day. I live in a rural area. The sun would rise during the run. I set out and it was incredible. I saw birds and wildlife and I experienced nature. This is going to sound fake, but I actually ran by a farm with horses, and they started running next to me.

I probably wouldn’t have noticed any of this if I was wrapped up in listening to things. Instead of being mad, I used it as a chance to love the new experience.

My Father

My father passed away early. It would be easy to always think about this negatively.

Why did it happen? Why to us? Why to him? It’s so unfair that good people get dealt bad health sometimes. It’s so unfair that bad people live into their hundreds.

Of course, you should grieve normally when something like this happens. I’m not saying to bury your emotions and pretend it was actually a good thing.

But there should come a time where you can feel gratitude for aspects of it. An easy one is that I was 31. That’s a lot more time than many people have. Plus, I had a good relationship with him all my life. This is also more than many people have.

These again feel a bit surface-level, though. When I started working on this in my journal, the thing I felt true gratitude for was that it was something we knew was coming. I got to spend time with him knowing it was the last time.

We got to say things to each other we probably never would have said otherwise. So many people pass away unexpectedly, leaving a big hole unsaid things.

Learning to feel gratitude for those last days was a revelation for me.

Final Thoughts

The goal of “hate gratitude journaling” is not to merely state things you should be grateful for. You must take something that you truly feel is negative and then really feel a sense of gratitude for some part of it.

Sometimes I have to sit there for five minutes while the emotions fight each other. Once I come out of that moment and write it into the gratitude section of my journal, it makes my entire day better and more productive.

It also will get you into a habit of brushing off the small things by and stressing less about the big things. You might be surprised when you first experience this new thought pattern in the real world.

Maybe there are no parking spots in the main parking lot of the grocery store and instead of raging, you accidentally think: at least I’ll get some exercise.