by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Gratitude is a Blessing for Your Realness and a Curse to the Ego
We’re often told that gratitude is supposed to be the secret sauce of the ‘good’ life with countless self-help books, spiritual teachers, and lifestyle influencers telling us that gratitude is the missing link between where we are and where we want to be.
It’s often marketed (literally) like some kind of cosmic frequency booster or a ‘manifestation hack’ to raise your vibe so that the Universe will deliver your dreams to your doorstep with next-day delivery and no signature required.
People see things like this and instantly start flocking to their gratitude journals, scribbling three things down mechanically every morning (like their dogs, the coffee they’re drinking, and the clouds in the sky or whatever) and then mediating on feelings of thankfulness for these things.
They do the ‘work’, hoping it will fast-track them to love, wealth, purpose, or whatever’s on their vision board (without doing any of the actual work, ideally, of course).
But then something strange happens:
They start to feel good – and not just a surface-level good.
There’s a strange sense of completion that begins to creep in – a sense that maybe everything is already okay; that maybe they already have what they need and so their reasons for starting to cultivate gratitude in the first place (to get all the things they thought they wanted from life) don’t matter anymore.
Bam! – just like that the panic sets in:
“Hang on… if I’m already grateful does that mean I’m going to lose my ambition? Am I supposed to stop chasing goals now? What if I become passive? What if I stop growing? What if I lose myself?!”
Welcome to the Gratitude Paradox.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
The Gratitude Paradox: What We Cover in This Article
- Gratitude is a Blessing for Your Realness and a Curse to the Ego
- The Gratitude Paradox Explained
- Why Gratitude Feels Like a Threat (At First)
- The Role of Acceptance in Real Transformation
- Gratitude Isn’t About Settling But About Aligning
- Realness Over Reward: A Shift in Orientation
- So How Do You Solve the Gratitude Paradox?
- Final Thoughts: Gratitude as a Way of Being
The Gratitude Paradox Explained
The paradox of gratitude usually goes like this:
- People often start practising gratitude as a way to get what they want instead of just to be grateful for how amazing life actually is (i.e. they want a “higher frequency”, to be better at manifestation, or to find a magic bullet that will give them a shortcut to their dream life).
- What they don’t initially realise is that true gratitude is an act of acceptance of their own realness and truth which fundamentally transforms their relationship with they way that they want things.
- This means that when acceptance starts to take hold and ground them into something true, it can feel like old drives or ego identities are being threatened because, in a way, they are (because the ego is the opposite of reality).
- This leads to confusion, internal conflict, and sometimes even self-sabotage: Basically: “Gratitude is making me too content… maybe I should stop?” (This is because gratitude has shown them the gap between the familiar identity of the ego and reality – not because it doesn’t work).
It’s a bit like trying to swim across a river to reach a treasure chest, only to discover that the chest is actually inside you, and then wondering whether you should still keep swimming for fun or just… kinda float.
Why Gratitude Feels Like a Threat (At First)
At the heart of this paradox is identity conflict (which is responsible for most of the problems in our lives, tbh):
The old self – the ego – thrives on lack and so it constantly needs something to chase, something to fix, or something to prove. It essentially builds itself on the illusion that “I’ll be enough when…” and then spends a lifetime chasing the dots it hopes to connect (which just makes us outcome-dependent – i.e. it causes us to outsource our levels of self-acceptance and self-worth to external things).
When we practise real gratitude – not just surface-level thankfulness, but the kind that truly grounds us in the present – we start to dismantle that identity because we get in touch with something REAL (and, again, the ego is the opposite of reality).
This is for one very simple reason:
Gratitude doesn’t just make you feel better – it makes you see more clearly.
This creates the kind of gratitude paradox we’re talking about because when you start to see more clearly, you begin to realise how much of your life was being steered by fear, shame, and ego-chasing:
You begin to question your goals; you begin to let go of things you thought you needed; you stop running so hard to avoid the Void and start seeing that what you were running from was really just your own disconnection from reality.
In short, your ego feels threatened because gratitude calls its bluff.
The Role of Acceptance in Real Transformation
Gratitude is powerful because it is a portal to acceptance and acceptance is powerful because it’s the foundation of realness.
When you accept what is – what’s truly present in your life – you stop pushing against reality, you stop resisting your own experience, and you begin to build from truth instead of fantasy.
This doesn’t mean you become passive or stagnant – quite the opposite, in fact:
It means your action becomes clean and your goals become real.
It means that you start to move from a place of clarity, not compensation – from fullness, not fear.
You make a switch from playing to prove something unreal to playing because you know you’re something REAL.
My book ‘Trust: A Manual for Becoming The Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace‘ has a chapter on gratitude and will help you to understand everything discussed in this article to an even deeper degree.
Gratitude Isn’t About Settling But About Aligning
A lot of the confusion comes from this idea that gratitude means you have to settle for whatever you’ve got – that if you’re thankful for your life as it is then you won’t be hungry for more.
But that’s just another trick of the ego because real gratitude doesn’t kill desire – it clarifies it by burning away the unreal desires – rooted in shame, guilt, or even trauma – so that’s what’s left are the real desires (INTENTIONS) that want to be expressed instead of chased.
This is something I’ve seen time and again in coaching:
People start their journey thinking they want X, Y, or Z because that’s what their ego believes will fill the gap but – once they drop into deeper layers of truth and acceptance – their goals evolve.
They shift and become less about proving and more about living – less concerned with things like status and instead more focused on something real like service.
It becomes less about escaping the Void and more about expressing the realness that was buried within it.
All of this is to say that gratitude doesn’t take your ambition away – it refines it.
Realness Over Reward: A Shift in Orientation
At the core of the Gratitude Paradox is a shift from outcome-dependence to focussing on the truth:
When you live from the ego, your entire life is about external rewards – validation, approval, power, possessions, security, etc. – and so you’re constantly chasing the highs to avoid the lows by playing the game of conditional happiness which says: “If I get this, then I’ll finally be okay“.
But when you start living from real gratitude, you begin to orient around something deeper and realise that in reality there are NO CONDITIONS to accepting yourself and life:
Instead of chasing things to fill you, you realise you’re already full, and find goals that are an expression of this fullness.
So How Do You Solve the Gratitude Paradox?
The ‘good’ news is that you don’t have to choose between gratitude and growth because – when done right – gratitude is growth (which is why people think it raises your vibe etc.).
The key is to use gratitude as a foundation for alignment – not as a tactic for attraction (or manifesting or whatever):
When you do that, your goals stop being a way to escape the present and become a way to express the truth you’ve found within it.
Here’s a practical way to work with the Gratitude Paradox using three stages: Awareness (Deconstruct the Ego), Acceptance (Integrate the Shadow), and Action (Trust Yourself and Life) – the same process I use with clients in my coaching practice (or that you can read about in my books like Trust and Shadow Life):
1. Awareness: Separate Ego Goals from Real Goals
Start by observing your current goals and desires and the kind of things you think you want from life.
Ask yourself some simple probing questions:
- Why do I want this?
- Is this desire coming from fear or fullness?
- Who am I trying to impress or prove something to?
- Would I still want this if nobody else knew about it?
This isn’t about judging yourself but about clarifying your intentions.
If a goal is rooted in shame or scarcity, gratitude will feel like a threat because it’s trying to remove the original source of the goal (ego) but if it’s rooted in realness then gratitude will only amplify it (because what’s real is always real so you can’t get rid of of it even if you want to).
2. Acceptance: Use Gratitude to Ground into the Truth
Set aside time each day for real gratitude – not just lists and journals but a deep sense of presence with whatever is true in your life.
Try this:
- Sit quietly for five minutes and reflect on what is real and valuable in your life right now.
- Let yourself feel the gratitude – not just think it.
- If you notice resistance (e.g., “But I still want more”), observe it without judgement. This is your ego making noise in an attempt to keep your shadow self at bay (because there is a constant battle between the two called the Shadow Dance).
- Let whatever needs to emerge from behind the ego and in the shadows do its thing.
In short: the more you practise gratitude as a form of acceptance, the more clearly you’ll see what’s actually worth pursuing and what isn’t.
3. Action: Let Real Gratitude Fuel Real Goals
Now you’re ready to move:
Take your clarified goals and ask: “How can I move towards this from a place of wholeness (realness) instead of fragmentation (ego)?”
Then take one small action – not to ‘get’ anything but to express something real.
When your actions become expressions instead of escape plans, you stop being outcome-dependent and you become process-driven, purpose-led, and paradox-free (i.e. staying grateful and still taking action).
Final Thoughts: Gratitude as a Way of Being
Solving the Gratitude Paradox doesn’t mean you have to throw your dreams away – it means you have to realign them with what’s actually true and REAL.
It means allowing gratitude to reveal your goals, not replace them.
Gratitude isn’t just a mental exercise – it’s a way of seeing and being in life; a way of relating to life and remembering who you really are beneath all the noise.
It might scare your ego a bit but that’s only because gratitude doesn’t play by its rules and will always bring you back to reality.
And reality, once accepted, always works.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to start taking real action in your life and you’re interested in coaching, then book a free coaching session with me today and we’ll find a way to get you moving.
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