When Two (Very Important) Things or Ideas Are True

The progressive political and nonprofit ecosystem is experiencing a lot of churn right now. Many people in DC have lost their jobs, whether because of the change in administrations in January or due to Elon Musk’s and Donald Trump’s collective insanity and related funding and headcount cuts. Other people are facing job losses due to economic shifts and bad policy choices coming out of the Trump administration.

In short, a lot of people are looking for jobs right now, as I wrote about earlier this year. Anecdotally, at least, this trend is continuing in my circles. This week I had a call with someone who is a hiring manager at an organization, and they mentioned that one senior level job posting in DC got 750 applications (a similar job got 150 last year at this time). 

I’m also encountering through my coaching clients or just conversations with friends a unique mindset that’s developing right now: People who have jobs, but are miserable in them, yet think they should just be grateful to have something (anything!) at this particularly precarious moment in time. 

As one person said to me, “I was really thinking about how bad this job is and how it exhausts me, but then I realized I should just focus on how lucky I am to have steady employment and income right now. So now I keep reminding myself of that, and it helps me manage my frustrations here.” 

Some things go together in surprising ways.

On one hand, I appreciate any mindset that might be rooted in gratitude. I do my best to not take things for granted, especially when I seem to be dodging slings and arrows while others aren’t so lucky. 

But dig a little deeper and there is something troubling about this mindset. For one thing, it tells us to be small and to not want or strive for more or better. That is a tough place to be, and can become the start of a pretty bad habit–or, perhaps, it’s just the latest manifestation of a long-standing habit. Whether new or old, I challenge people to think beyond this limited–and limiting–place.

Perhaps the most troubling thing about this way of thinking is people are forgetting that two seemingly contradictory things or ideas can be true. Maybe you should (and can) be grateful for what you have, but maybe you are also ready for–and deserve–something new. 

I’ve been helping a few of my coaching clients see how these two ideas can live together in their heads. And, importantly, how they can live in service of one another. Gratitude at its best is clear-eyed and real–it’s not there to fool us into accepting a hard situation. In helping us see what is, it can help us see what can be–or what else we need to keep growing and evolving. 

We shouldn’t confuse being grateful with staying small. There is much to be done to fix this broken world, and we all need to show up believing in what can come next–for ourselves and the planet.