Creating with Gratitude (2025)
Two years ago, I wrote about creating with gratitude, sharing practices like Morning Pages, Creative Fuel Days, and keeping a positive mindset. All of that still stands. But this year, after working with dozens of creative professionals and agencies, I've learned something harder and more honest about gratitude:
It's not a natural habit. It's a forced practice.
And that changes everything.
The Truth About Gratitude in Creative Work
Here's what I've learned working with creative professionals in 2024: You cannot create from a stance of bitterness or anxiety. When you let overwhelm and discontentment win, your work suffers. Not just your output—your work. The thing you're called to do.
I watched this play out with a client we'll call John. John was committed to making art and not settling for whatever paid the bills. That's admirable. But then the anxiety of what he might not have settled in. He lost sight of the gratitude in his current circumstance—the clients he did have, the skills he'd developed, the freedom to even chase his creative vision.
His work suffered. Not because his talent disappeared, but because anxiety is a terrible creative partner.
Thankfully, we got him back on track. But it required something most people don't want to hear about gratitude:
You have to force it. Especially when you don't feel it.
When Gratitude Dies, Teams Follow
I've also seen how one person's lack of gratitude infects entire teams. When the leader is down, the rest of the team is down. Teams rise to a level just below leadership.
If you're leading a creative team—even if that team is just you and one other person—your gratitude (or lack of it) sets the ceiling for everyone around you.
This isn't about fake positivity. This is about the hard work of choosing gratitude when revenue is down, when clients are difficult, when deadlines feel impossible.
How to Practice Gratitude When It's Hard
So what do you do when you're behind schedule, a client is demanding, and your team is stressed?
Here's my real answer, not the Instagram answer:
Choose what is most in your control.
I use what I call the Priority Framework: identify the next right thing. Not all the things. Just the next one. Focus on getting that done rather than drowning in the full list.
The "next right thing" approach keeps you centered and prevents losing control. And when you complete that one thing? That's something to be grateful for. Then you do it again.
This is forced gratitude. Intentional gratitude. Gratitude built on small wins, not waiting for everything to be perfect.
A Simple Daily Practice
My wife has been keeping a gratitude journal for years now. She started with a goal of writing 10,000 gratitudes. Now she's on her way to 100,000.
Not big, impressive things every day. Just things. Small things. Present things.
A gratitude journal written in each day helps here. It's simple. It works. It forces the practice when the feeling isn't there.
Three Gratitudes That Center Me
As I write this in 2024, running two businesses (Chief Creative Consultants and The Culture Base), with more responsibility than I had last year, here's what I'm learning to be grateful for:
The opportunities in front of me.
The relationships beside me.
The knowledge behind me.
Future, present, past. All three matter. All three deserve gratitude.
The opportunities I get to pursue. The people I get to work with (clients, team members, family). The lessons I've learned that got me here.
When anxiety tries to steal my creative focus, I come back to these three.
Two years ago I asked which practice you'd implement to take your creativity to the next level.
This year I'm asking something different:
What forced gratitude practice will you commit to, even when you don't feel grateful?
Because that's where transformation happens. Not in the easy moments of natural thankfulness, but in the hard moments when you choose gratitude anyway.
Your work depends on it.