Gratitude vs Toxic Positivity

I’m writing this from Sayulita, Mexico, which I’d describe as Byron Bay meets Seminyak (Bali) with a few less Aussies and a lot more tacos.

It’s a great little surf and fishing town north of Puerto Vallarta. Colours everywhere. Salt in the air. Golf carts buzzing around as people scoot to small cafes and wide-open beaches. There is very little that is urgent here.

You may have noticed that I skipped my Sunday email this week. To be honest I needed a breath. A chance to take in the sun and switch screen time for swimming time.

And it feels good to be beside the mighty Pacific Ocean. It’s had me remembering a quote I often come back to on holidays like this:

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.” - Isak Dinesen

Sometimes healing looks like hard work. Sometimes it looks like a bit of crying, and sometimes it just looks like rest and floating in a gentle sea.

Being on holiday has me thinking about a lot of different things. The gratitude I have for being here, but also the frustrations when things don’t go as smoothly as we sometimes want them to (my son literally threw up in the customs line as we waited to speak to Mexican immigration). That seems to be the essence of travel: new experiences that provide perspective, while navigating mild frustrations as we navigate the unknown moments. These moments stretch us in a thousand different ways, and when your hat gets ruined because you needed to use it as a last-minute bucket, it’s a bit of a grin-and-bear-it moment.

And, even if we’re on holiday, it’s hard to stay upbeat and positive in moments like that.

Gratitude vs toxic positivity

Some people confuse gratitude with toxic positivity, but I don’t think they are the same thing at all.

And the distinction matters, because both ask something of us, and some of us don’t have much to give. A lot of people are tired. Not just physically tired, but emotionally tired. Tired of trying to hold it together. Tired of being told to “look on the bright side” when life feels heavy. Tired of feeling like the preferred emotional state is upbeat, polished, and positive.

On the surface, telling someone to “try and stay positive” can sound harmless (perhaps even helpful). But often it lands with a thud.

It tells people, including ourselves, that difficult emotions are inconvenient. That sadness, frustration, anger, disappointment, or grief should be moved along as quickly as possible. That if we can just smile a bit harder, we’ll somehow skip the messy middle.

But that’s not how it works. Life is so often about how we navigate the messy middle.

Gratitude is different. Gratitude is choosing to notice what is still true, still valuable, still steady, even when something hurts. It’s grounded and a lot more honest, and perhaps also more mature. Gratitude says, “This is hard… and there is still something here.”

It might be a lesson, a signal, a person, even just a chance to pause and remember that it could be a lot worse (I can easily think of 5 different ways our incident at the airport could have gone). That’s why gratitude can be a real resilience practice. It requires us to feel what is real and move through it. Not slap a motivational quote over the top of it and think we’re growing.

And we can’t forget that pain and gratitude can coexist. Some of the most meaningful gratitude only becomes visible once life gets hard enough to strip everything else away. That is where one of my favourite tools comes in.

Create a dual statement

This is one of the simplest and most practical ways I know to stay emotionally honest without getting swallowed by the moment. A dual statement helps us hold two truths at once.

The first truth acknowledges reality exactly as it is. The second truth adds a stabilizing perspective. Something that helps us keep our feet on the floor.

It sounds like this:

This is hard… and…

Note that I use “and” instead of “but” which allows both things to be true at the same time. It lets us acknowledge the discomfort without giving it the whole spotlight.

Here are some examples:

1. “I’m overwhelmed right now… and it’s a signal that I need to pause.”

2. “This setback stings… and it’s giving me information I needed.”

3. “I’m frustrated with how this meeting went… and I’m thankful for a team that cares enough to debate.”

None of these statements deny the hard part, and that’s what makes them more of a resilience play. I like to think of dual statements as a way of standing with both feet on the floor. We are grounded enough to tell the truth and steady enough to move forward.

This works because it does three important things.

1. It reduces emotional charge.

   When we name what is true, the nervous system often settles. We stop fighting reality and start relating to it. There is power in what psychologists sometimes call “name it to tame it.” Naming the emotion or the situation helps the brain process it more clearly because our logical mind kicks in.

2. It opens up so many perspectives.

   The beauty of the word “and” is that it opens a door instead of closing one. It invites possibility without invalidating pain. It helps us find something stable to stand on without pretending the storm isn’t there. We look for the opportunity.

3. It builds more durability.

   We tend to life in this binary world where most of think life is either/or. If we’re not thriving, we must be failing. If we feel doubt, we must be weak. But resilient people learn to hold complexity. They understand that life is often both/and. As an example, it is possible to be grateful and disappointed.

All of this builds emotional strength. The capacity to stay with reality and respond well in challenging times. Perhaps it is as simple as acknowledging the the salt water we have around us, whether it’s the ocean, the sweat or the tears.

They are all part of the healing in their own way. Because we should never forget that it is possible to be struggling and still moving forward.

Stay resilient legends!

Carré at Resilient Minds