Why I Suck at Gratitude.

And how I have to teach it to learn it.

Marianne Williamson’s best known quote begins, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.” She said lots of other wise things, too.

When I wrote, Why Is It So Hard To Ask For What We Want? and a series of other articles about making powerful requests, responding to powerful requests, and how to break commitments without breaking relationships, I thought I’d written everything that needed to be said about communicating desire, boundaries, and intentions.

I was wrong.

As is often the case, my own limitations have been revealed to me through my teaching. Recently, a close friend observed that “a lot of the things you advise your students to do are the things you’re working on yourself.”

It’s true.

In this case, a conversation I had with one of my proteges about his problem that he was having revealed to me the one thing about getting what I want that I’d been overlooking the entire time.

I have a problem accepting what people who love me want to give me.

It isn’t enough, knowing what I want.
It isn’t enough, asking for what I want.
I also have to be OK with getting what I want.

Because this seemed to be exactly the problem that my protege was struggling with, I told him this story of my own:

I was in a relationship…