What can myths teach us about gratitude?

You may have heard of the Midas touch before, either in songs, in passing or from the myth itself directly. I myself for a long time interpreted the Midas touch to be a good thing. Everything you touch turns to gold… simple right? Well if you read up about the myth the reality is it turns out to actually be more like a curse for King Midas, a curse that I argue could have been avoided if Midas practised gratitude. 

The story of King Midas is a myth about the tragedy of avarice (extremely strong desire for money and possessions) it shows us the potential downside for not appreciating what you have in the present moment. It's an important lesson because ultimately, no matter how successful, free and fulfilled you become in life, it means nothing if you can’t sit back and smell the roses, it's all too easy to compare yourself to others or to become a slave to your own desires, making you perpetually pissed off that you aren’t there just yet. 

Obviously, we are massive advocates for taking action and trying to better ourselves but as Midas would attest, this is all completely redundant if you can’t appreciate all there is to appreciate. 

Midas was a king way back in the day in the country of Phrygia (now known as Turkey). Seemingly, at the time he had all you could wish for, plenty of power and esteem, a fancy palace with all the trimmings shared with a beautiful daughter. Despite his great wealth Midas thought his great source of happiness came from attaining more gold, he was obsessed, often he could be found covered in gold or in his castle counting his golden coins.

Long story short, one day Dionyssus, the God of Wine and Festivity rolled through Midas’ kingdom and Midas ended up helping one of his companions along the way. Dionyssus, grateful for the king's kindness, wanted to repay the favour and promised to grant Midas any wish. Midas, not having the smarts to wish for infinite wishes, thought for a while before saying ‘I wish that everything I touch becomes gold’. 

The following day Midas began putting his new ability to the test running around his swanky palace turning everything from chairs to bathtubs into gold. At first, the king was elated, all his dreams had come true. He then began to go about his day but came into trouble, the bread he tried to eat turned to gold and was inedible, the rose he tried to smell turned to gold in his hands, the smell dissipating before he had the chance to enjoy it. The penny started to drop and fear began to set in just as his daughter entered the room. Panicked and tearful, Midas rushed over to his daughter, hugged her and turned her into a golden statue. 

Midas had all that he had ever desired, infinite gold, but with it had lost all that he should have appreciated all along. 

In the ancient myth, Midas was able to atone for his mistakes and everything he touched returned to his previous state and Midas lived out his years as a generous king grateful and appreciative of all the wonderful things in his life. 

If Midas regularly practised gratitude and appreciated all that he had maybe his wish wouldn’t have resulted in such a disaster. 

This story is so applicable to modern life. As a collective we human beings are constantly striving for the next best thing and comparing ourselves to others, stopping ourselves from appreciating what we have now. And this is very easily done, there are so many shiny objects to chase and for lots of people their future aspirations are what drive them forwards, however this, isn’t the issue. The problem comes when you can’t appreciate what you have in the present moment, when you can’t love the process of building towards something in the future, when you are unhappy right now but tell yourself you will be happy in the future when you achieve your dreams and aspirations all the while depriving yourself of appreciation in the present moment.

Leveraging Gratitude is essential to allow you to enjoy the process of working towards those goals, letting you appreciate how much you achieved when you get there. 

What is gratitude?

“Gratitude is the art of appreciation. Studies have proven that what you think about the most is what you will notice in your life. Perception is everything. When you can tap into the art of appreciating every moment, that is when even the most challenging obstacles can become easier to overcome. Gratitude can provide long-lasting positivity and help you recover from hardships faster.” - Julie Blouin

For many, gratitude is an elusive emotion that passes them by, it's not something they take the time to think about, it's not something that is spoken about in most friendship groups or taught in schools so people aren’t aware of how life changing and mind altering the simple practice of daily gratitude can be. 

I could list off the benefits of gratitude here but I think it's better for your own understanding to do that yourself. There’s so much research and content out there on the benefits and plenty of recommended methods of practice. 

I believe the best way to practise gratitude is to have a consistent written practice (and that’s exactly why it’s a fundamental part of the Evolve Journal), typically twice  daily, in the morning and the evening, you don’t need to spend long at all to reap the benefits. 

If this is a little outside of your comfort zone you can start off by simply asking yourself a few questions in your head during your morning and evening routines, when you are stuck in traffic, going for a walk or waiting in a queue. ‘What in life am I grateful for?’, ‘Why am I smiling?’, ‘Who do I appreciate?’. Next time you’re feeling down these questions will also be a great help!

Ask yourself these questions and let your mind wander freely. Don’t worry if you end up repeating things, this just means they are important to you and it's good to recognise that. Don’t be afraid to get abstract too. When you are faced with a challenge, obstacle or daunting task and your mentality begins to shift to see the upside and the opportunity, you know you’re getting there. 

Don’t let gratitude pass you by, make sure you take the time to ground yourself to the present moment and take the time to smell the roses before it's too late. 

How does your perception impact your life?

We can all relate to an instance where time has flown by in the blink of an eye where hours felt like minutes. 

Perhaps this was when you were working on a project at work, playing sport or knees deep in a night out with your best mates. I think we can also relate to minutes feeling like hours being stuck in long traffic jams or waiting in an orderly standstill British queue. 

This is all down to your perception.

“How we see and understand what occurs around us—and what we decide those events will mean.” - Ryan Holiday

You relationship with time matters

Time has a nifty habit of doing the opposite of what you want, the more you beg it to speed up the more the clock hand seems to petulantly resist. This is perhaps the downside to enjoying the hell out of your life… it seems to flash before your eyes (definitely worse problems to have). 

Your perception though isn’t just limited to how you experience and process time, it is the lens through which you see the world. If you have ever tried on a friend’s glasses and seen the world through their perspective you will know how disorientating seeing the world through the wrong lens can be. 

The great thing about being human is that our thoughts and emotions are choices.

We can choose to see the good in something, we can choose to see the silver lining in a cloud. 

When you're hungry, stressed and you've just been shat on (either figuratively or literally) it may feel like you have no choice but to break into an emotional outburst showing that brick wall who’s boss by breaking your hand on it.

While it can definitely feel like you don’t have a choice, I would encourage you to dig a little deeper. 

What can we learn from Viktor Frankl?

Viktor Frankl is a testament to this. Over the 1940s Frankl spent time in four separate Nazi Concentration Camps and was the only survivor from his family. I recommend checking out his book based on his theories from his time in the camps, ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’.

Frankl wrote: ‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.’ 

He was able to cultivate this opinion based on his experiences of suffering which dwarf the suffering felt in everyday struggles. 

Through his perception of his reality, he was able to find meaning through his suffering. 

In this way, Frankl believed that when we can no longer change a situation, we are forced to change ourselves. So many situations we face are completely out of our control and are only really made bad by our thoughts and reactions to the situation. 

Ryan Holiday writes in his book ‘The obstacle is the way’ - “There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.”

If you have ever checked out Stoicism you will be familiar with this concept. 

Situations are neither good nor bad, we as people make them so through our lenses and the meaning we give to situations.

A car breakdown for person A could be met with elation that they are finally able to justify getting rid of an old rust bucket and replace it with a newer model however for person B they could be seething at the inconvenience and the time wasted spent waiting for breakdown recovery. 

This example lends itself to the circumstance each person is in but if we strip it back everyone has the choice available to them to think rationally and calmly and to choose to focus on solving problems. 

If you look at a task as a mountain that must be climbed in one go, undoubtedly this will lead you to freak out about how insurmountable the task ahead is.

Instead, if you break it down into small bite-sized chunks each manageable in their own right it is simply just a case of shooting the ducks that are in front of you and before you know it you will be looking down from the summit of the mountain with great satisfaction.

Haitians have a proverb that translates to ‘Beyond mountains, there are mountains’.

You must learn to enjoy the process and realise that when you do reach the summit it will soon be time to climb again. 

While it may sometimes be testing we should all try to shift away from perception and into observation. 

Perceiving relies on our subjective emotions which can be deceiving. 

With observation, we can use logic to make a rational decision and choose how we feel about something. 

This gives us the freedom to choose how we think and feel which is so liberating.

With this in your tool kit, you no longer need to live in dread or fear of disaster or worry about the worst-case scenario which so many are guilty of.

Instead, you can remain in the present knowing that if issues do arise the one thing you do have control of how you choose to perceive and observe them giving you the best chance to handle them as the best version of yourself. 

You can use a bit of mental hokey pokey in order to find the lesson or the purpose of the pain caused by an event or issue.

Great questions to ask yourself are ‘What can I control in this situation?’, ‘What can I learn from this situation?’ ‘’Is my perception of the situation helping me or hindering me?’.

“Choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.” – Marcus Aurelius

Mindset is such a powerful tool to play around with and in many ways, it can be the secret to living a fulfilling and empowered mind. 

What is a famous example of fixed mindset?

John McEnroe reached the top in world tennis winning 7 grand slams and was renowned for his animated outbursts.

While you can’t deny his achievements you can certainly ask, ‘could he have done more?’.

The answer would be yes, both with his on-court tantrums and his tennis performances. 

While he was renowned for his outbursts, he was a way off the top spot which must go to Marat Safin who smashed his racket 48 times in 1999 alone.

Over his 12-year career, he broke some 700 rackets.

However, even Safin had his limits... He insisted “You can’t destroy a racket and a chair in the same match – there has to be a limit − otherwise this is the tennis of a sick person.”

So how could McEnroe have done more? And how can we apply this to our lives?

What is  Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

American Psychologist Carol Dweck’s 2007 book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success introduces the concept of fixed and growth mindsets.

Using McEnroe as an example Dweck highlights the limit a ‘fixed mindset’ can have on performance.

By McEnroe’s own admission, he didn’t live up to his full potential.

While his natural talent was so great that he was still able to reach great heights, he could have done much more.

‘He did not love to learn. He did not thrive on challenges; when the going got rough, he often folded.’ Explains Dweck. ‘In the fixed mindset, setbacks label you,’ she says. His complete inability to deal with failure ultimately held him back and stopped him from improving.

It is hard to learn from your mistakes when you think everything and everyone else is to blame.

During his time on court McEnroe blamed everything from umpiring decisions to his racquets, in his mind it could never be his fault as this would question his innate talent.

Without the resilience to fail, you can expect to see limited growth.

There are strategies you can adopt to help overcome the fear of failure and we use a 'Fear Setting' exercise in the onboarding course of the Evolve Journal to help you do just that. 

What is the difference between fixed and growth mindsets?

These are the underlying beliefs people have about learning and intelligence.

In a fixed mindset, students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset, students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.—Carol Dweck, Stanford University

One person that encapsulates the growth mindset is Michael Jordan. We highly recommend checking out The Last Dance series on Netflix, this will give you an insight into the mindset that drove one of the GOAT in basketball and sport as a whole.

This quote from Michael shows his mindset - "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

His success can be attributed more to his drive and his work ethic more than his natural talent.

Michael wasn’t so egotistical that he couldn't fail, he used failure as fuel to learn and adapt which led to his many successes.

Adopting a growth mindset

Learn to recognise your ‘fixed voice’ and learn when to ignore it. 

A certain amount of doubt is healthy, necessary even, yet not an excuse. 

Not trying because something probably won't work is fixed mindset mentality. 

Trying something and failing and then asking what you can learn is a growth mindset mentality. 

People who've had success in their lives, however you measure that, are the people that have failed the most. 

Your achievements will always be more about your hard work than your innate talent. 

Record your failures and record your successes.

Without one, you can't have the other. 

Learn to love failure and you will learn to grow. 

Love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy the effort and keep on learning - Carol Dweck