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- I used to enjoy things. Now they feel like chores.
I used to enjoy things. Now they feel like chores.
When joy disappears, it’s rarely because we stopped caring. It’s because we stopped feeling. Here’s how gratitude can help it return.
Gavin Kemp
July 06, 2025
Welcome to Week Four of Gratitude in an Age of Burnout
This week’s message is for the person who used to love reading, cooking, walking, journaling… but now finds even those things exhausting.
You’re not broken.
Joy hasn’t left you.
It’s just gone quiet.
Let’s go and find it again, not with pressure, but with attention.
Week-by-Week Progress Tracker
Week 1: Energy Leak Audit
Week 2: 30-Second Loop
Week 3: One-Minute Anchor
Week 4: Micro-Contrast Method (You are here)
Week 5: Neutral Lens Practice
Week 6: Rhythm Reset
TL;DR
Joy becomes inaccessible when the nervous system is flooded.
Even beautiful things start to feel mechanical.
Gratitude can reawaken pleasure, not by forcing happiness, but by retraining our perception.
The strange numbness that follows burnout
You sit down to write, and nothing comes.
You make a meal you used to love, and it tastes like cardboard.
Even rest feels like a task on your to-do list.
This isn’t laziness, it’s sensory shutdown.
When your system’s been in survival mode too long, joy gets rerouted, and you stop receiving input from the world.
And the world starts feeling flat.
What you might be asking:
“Why do things I used to enjoy now feel like obligations?”
The gentle way joy comes back.
Joy doesn’t return through pressure.
It returns through contrast.
Gratitude helps you feel again, but not by chasing highs.
Instead, it lets you notice texture:
This tea is warmer than yesterday’s.
The sound of rain is softer than the kettle.
The tone of light is a little more golden than it was this morning.
These aren’t insights. They’re inputs.
And the moment you start feeling differences again… that’s when joy can find its way back.
This Week’s Micro-Technique: The Micro-Contrast Method
What it is:
A 3-line journaling technique that retrains your sensory awareness.
Step 1:
Think of something you used to enjoy, but currently feel numb to.
(Reading, walking, journaling, music, cooking…)
Step 2:
Write three lines:
“I used to enjoy…”
“Today it felt like…”
“What I noticed was…”
That last line is everything.
It creates space for joy to re-enter, without needing to fake it.
Gratitude Gem
“Joy doesn’t return through effort.
It returns through noticing the difference.”
This Week’s Practice (CTA)
Choose one thing you used to enjoy.
Give it one more go, but journal the contrast:
“I used to enjoy…”
“Today it felt like…”
“What I noticed was…”
Don’t chase the joy.
Just catch the texture.
Until next week…
Flatness is not failure.
It’s the pause before sensation returns.
See you in Week 5.
Gavin
Daily Prompts and Affirmations
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Optional Companion
If you want something beside you while this shift continues, the Morning Gratitude Reset Kit is now open.
It’s not a journal.
It’s a structure.
A way to support the kind of person you already are.
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