Entitlement vs Deserving vs Gratitude

Gratitude

I was watching a short interview last night on youtube with a celebrity and he spoke a few times about being grateful. He’s a number one author in the UK and his feeling of gratefulness was palpable.

I was amazed that someone so wealthy was grateful for the little details in life and taking the time to notice and speak about them. That it wasn’t a given that he had what he had.

It got me to thinking about gratefulness and a line came into my head.

Entitlement is the thief of gratefulness.

Entitlement

The dictionary’s definition of entitlement is “the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment” and “the fact of having a right to something.”

I thought about entitlement schema. Years ago a therapist said to me that she felt I had an entitlement schema that probably kept me feeling like a victim when things didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I felt quite taken a back, because I felt like I was lacking rather than entitled.

I think there’s a fine line between feeling you have a right to something, ie like your birthright, that you deserve Love, Wealth, Joy etc and a sense that you are special, and perhaps deserve it above others, or you deserve it because you missed out so much.

Deserving

So that got me thinking about the word deserving. Why is it different than the word entitlement? Because in a sense they have the same kind of meaning.

For me it feels like entitlement comes from the ego, it could be seen as being narcissistic, where it is all about Me Me Me, without a spiritual connection.

Deserving feels like it has a higher connection, more spiritual. It still feels like its our birthright to be deserving of a good life, but it feels more spiritually focused.

Gratefulness

Then that brings me back to gratefulness. It is a foundational principle of many cultures and religions and also a principle in the Law of Attraction. What we focus on expands, and if we are grateful for our blessings in life, then we see life from a different lens and are generally happier.

It is our birthright to be deserving, but as we know by now, life has ups and downs and we aren’t entitled to a good life and life isn’t a given.

We can be grateful for what we have.