Is it impossible to be grateful and angry simultaneously?

Have you ever thought of this?  As human beings, as emotional beings, as beings capable of feeling, anger and gratitude cannot coexist.

You may think, what does this have to do with anything, and you could be right, but if you have an issue with anger, you might be interested in the antidote.  Or it could be the case that there’s something not quite right in your emotional world at the moment, and you’re searching for a solution, and you sense that there’s something about the quality of gratitude that could help.

Gratitude does help.  Gratitude is the key thing that feeds into kindness, patience, gentleness, and other fruit of the Spirit.  Gratitude fortifies the propensities we all have, the limitations of our humanity, that bear themselves over others and damage our relationships.

Think about the negative role of anger in all our lives because we’re devoid of the gratitude we should otherwise have.  Think of the judgements we make about others, the love we withdraw because we feel entitled to a piece of someone else, or the resentment we carry that we cannot control some finite part of our lives or another’s life.

Whenever we talk about mental health, and inevitably we talk about mental ill health, we are always cognisant of the blow-up point, that point where we lose control, where we react without thinking, as if on automatic pilot, but driven by despairing emotions.

The way to prepare ourselves for good mental health outcomes is via gratitude, as really the only investment we can make that will feed in positively and engorge our circumstances with hope, a sense of joy, even peace.

Gratitude may feel impossible when we’re angry, confused, overwhelmed, afraid, but as soon as we ponder it seriously, our mood is challenged to shift.

That’s not to say that certain so-called negative emotions are invalid.

There’s a time for anger, just as there’s a time for joy, but anger is best justified, channelled, and purpose driven.  It’s when it responds to injustice by actions that right the status quo.  And the best anger is not seen as anger at all, it simply motivates right action.

The build-up to the blow-up point is interesting.  We don’t typically track it well.  This is why gratitude is important as a crucial defence system to invest in daily.

Years ago I had a mantra—no complaints, no compromises, no comparisons—and it worked, for a time.  A better mantra adds something to the “no complaints” piece.  A focus on adding gratitude to our mindset daily is far better than to focus on NOT doing something, in this situation to not complain.

If we agree that anger cannot coexist gratitude, we might agree it will be powerful when deployed as a daily and moment-by-moment strategy in each of our lives.  Imagine being in a state of utter grateful bliss—not a dreamworld paradigm, but a real mindset and state of heart to nurture.

If we fill our lives with the presence of thankfulness for the breath of life, for our senses, for our capacities and capabilities (focused on what we truly have, not what we don’t have), for the concept of life itself, and for a thousand more identifiable gratuities, we add more truth to our lives than we presently do.

Things to be grateful for are truths of goodness that we can be rightly thankful for.

It’s good to be grateful, especially to ward against those times when we might inevitably despair enough that we would assault people or harm ourselves.

To be grateful is not being overly optimistic.  It’s simply the choice to look up and around, and to see what we ordinarily miss, to mitigate the risks of acting entitled and of not being downcast due to the inevitable injustices that rise up against us.  Why do we allow frustrations to overcome us?

Gratitude is the wisdom of choosing what eternity gives us to see every given moment.

I can tell you what I’ve been doing for a while now.  I deal differently with anger in my life or in the lives of others I relate with.  If I’m angry I deal with it.  I pour contempt on the spirit of much of my own anger, and I tell myself to promptly deal with the truth of what’s causing the anger.  When I find that I’m the source of anger in others I ask if there’s anything I can do about it.  Oftentimes I can, so I do.  But beyond that, if a person is angry with me beyond what I’m responsible for, I must leave that as a matter for them to conclude.

We’re all responsible for our own emotions.  Gratitude mitigates the anger that rises up as a complaint of the heart, of resentment, of feeling entitled, of demanding things be different.

By engaging in gratitude, we take responsibility for our emotional world, and we fortify ourselves against losing emotional control.