Gratitude is Not an Emotion (And That’s Why It Fails in January)

It’s gratitude season.

You can feel it. The posts are coming. People are grateful for their families, their teams, their opportunities, their dogs, and their coffee. Companies send out polished appreciation emails. Everyone turns into a temporary monk.

And then January hits. It’s dark. It’s gray. It’s busy. And all that public gratitude disappears.

I take issue with how we have packaged gratitude: it’s become seasonal theater. You’re supposed to be grateful, so you lean into the feeling for a few weeks, maybe volunteer, donate, do the Toys for Tots thing.

Then the calendar flips and it evaporates.

When I sat down to record this week’s episode, I was tired and cranky, and honestly not in the mood for “be thankful” messaging. But I was interested in something very specific:

How do you build a version of gratitude that actually works in the middle of February when it’s cold, the kids are loud, and life is not curated for a social media post?

That question led me to something that really surprised me.

Gratitude is not an emotion

I always assumed gratitude was an emotion. You feel happy, sad, angry … grateful. Same category.

Turns out that’s wrong.

Gratitude is not a spontaneous emotional experience. It’s an interpretation.

Something happens:  Your brain notices it, interprets it, assigns value to it. Only then do you get the emotional response we call gratitude.

The emotion comes after the cognition.

Think about the person who loves the rain because “it means the flowers will be beautiful.” On a bad day you might want to smack them, but they’ve simply interpreted a miserable moment through a different lens. The rain isn’t inherently pleasant or unpleasant - it just is. They’ve attached meaning to it, and that meaning produces the emotion.

Gratitude works the same way.

The world happens. You interpret it. If your interpretation assigns value, you get gratitude. If your interpretation focuses on threat, loss, or comparison, you get stress, anxiety, or resentment.

The parasympathetic nervous system and the “gratitude feeling”

Years ago, I heard Richard Boyatzis (organizational psychologist, Case Western) talk about the sympathetic vs. parasympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic is “go mode” – stress, action, move. Parasympathetic is “anti-stress” – recovery, calm, connection.

In one exercise, he asked everyone to think of someone who had helped them in a meaningful way. A boss, a friend, a family member. Then people shared those stories.

People started crying. There was nostalgia, appreciation, warmth. When he asked what people felt, they gave all kinds of words: gratitude, love, joy, whatever language they had available.

His point: that state we struggle to name is the parasympathetic nervous system in action. And we didn’t get there by accident. We got there by thinking – cognitively revisiting a moment, assigning value to it, and then feeling the response.

That’s gratitude as an interpretation. Emotion following cognition.

Why gratitude feels so hard

If gratitude were purely emotional, you’d be stuck waiting for it. Some days it would show up. Most days it wouldn’t. You’d assume you’re broken.

If it’s interpretive, you can train it.

Here’s the catch: anything that requires a perspective shift is effortful. Our default mode is wired for negativity. We focus on threats, on what’s missing, on the one negative comment in a sea of positive feedback.

Gratitude is a difficult recognition skill because it has to interrupt that wiring. It has to challenge your assumptions and your judgment. It asks you to stop filling in the gaps with worst-case scenarios and fear.

That’s why it’s work.

Perspective, presence, and proof

If you want gratitude that survives past the holidays, you need three things: Perspective, Presence and Proof. 

Perspective
Ask yourself:

• What am I taking for granted because I’m used to it?

• What in my life “just works” that I never actually name?

• What stories do I tell that block my appreciation of what I’ve built?

Chances are, the version of you from five or ten years ago would be stunned by your current reality. But you’ve normalized it. You’ve moved the goalposts. Perspective is about pausing long enough to see how far you’ve actually come.

Presence
You can’t appreciate what you’re not present for.

If the kids are screaming and you’re trying to read a book, maybe the move is to put the book down, join the chaos for a while, and find the gratitude there. If you’re with friends and scrolling your phone, you’re not actually with your friends.

Simple changes help: Going for a walk without headphones. Putting the phone in a drawer. Doing a puzzle. Playing a game at the table.

Presence isn’t mystical. It’s the decision to actually be where you are.

Proof
This is where most holiday-style gratitude collapses. People say they’re grateful, but they can’t point to any evidence.

I’m big on proof. For clients struggling with imposter syndrome or stepping into senior roles, I often have them create what I call a “pause doc” – a file where they collect compliments, meaningful feedback, or moments where someone expressed trust or belief in them.

Reading it brings them back to those moments and recreates that parasympathetic, anti-stress, gratitude feeling. It’s a practical way to anchor “I’m grateful” in something real.

You can do the same thing with your life: A positivity document. A proof folder. A notes file. A place where you keep the evidence that you’ve done good work, survived hard things, and built something worth respecting.

Gratitude as a power move

Gratitude is not softness. It’s not sentimental. It’s not seasonal.

It’s clarity. It’s focus. It’s choosing what gets your attention. And it’s powerful.

When you consistently practice it – with perspective, presence, and proof – you become less reactive and less anxious. You care less about strangers’ opinions on social media. You’re harder to knock off your game.

That’s strength.

Don’t wait for gratitude to arrive on schedule with the decorations. Go build it now, in the middle of the noise, and carry it into the new year.

For more on this, see the podcast here.