Hey Royals, this topic has been on my mind for a while. So, I turned 30 in March, and honestly, I wasn’t sure if I’d earned the right to say anything profound about it yet. But it turns out, even a few months in, there’s plenty to unpack. A few months before I turned 30, I had mixed feelings of happiness, gratitude, worry about ageing and pressure for not accomplishing what I would feel was “enough”.
What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude is less about a list of rules and more about a gentle retraining of how my heart, head, and hands show up in the world. I say retraining because, in becoming 30, life felt like a slow, persistent teacher, not a shout from the rooftops, but a series of small, consistent nudges that reshaped my mindset. This piece is personal, full of the messy lessons, the tiny victories, and the quiet realisations that came with age, responsibilities, disappointments, and more profound joys.
Below, I share ten lessons that have shaped my understanding of gratitude as I turned 30. I wrote this as if I were telling a close friend over coffee: candid, slightly messy, but sincere.
1. Gratitude Stopped Being Performative and Became Sincere
When I was in my 20s, gratitude often looked polished: polite smiles in public, thank-you notes, posted “blessings” on social media, especially on my WhatsApp stories, lol. Truly, those gestures weren’t dishonest, but they were sometimes aimed at appearance rather than a felt sense of thanks.
What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude was to feel it before I said it. There were nights when none of the neat phrases would come, because inside I felt angry, tired, or anxious. Learning to wait until gratitude was genuine changed everything. When the feeling and the words aligned, the thanks I offered felt like a gift to me and the receiver. Practically, this meant saying less out of obligation and more out of honest recognition: the friend who brought soup during a sick week, my mom who flew miles away to celebrate my birthday, the neighbour who called just to check in on a random day.
These small, unscripted moments taught me that gratitude rooted in truth has a gravity that obligations don’t.
2. Gratitude Became A Practice, not A One-off reaction
As I turned 30, I started incorporating gratitude into my life. What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude is that, like exercise, it benefits from consistent attention. I started a tiny evening ritual: three things I noticed that day I could genuinely appreciate.
Sometimes it was as mundane as the quiet hum of my kettle, sometimes as big as a repaired relationship. Over weeks, this habit rewired my attention. Instead of scanning life for what was missing, I trained my mind to notice what was present.
The results were subtle but unmistakable: less chronic dissatisfaction, a calmer baseline mood, and improved sleep. Practising gratitude didn’t erase problems, but it softened the edges and gave me more bandwidth to do the work they required.
3. I Learned To Name The Small Things That mattered
Now, I keep a running list of “tiny wins” in my phone: the plant I hadn’t killed yet, a compliment from a stranger, a useful email answered. What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude was that naming specific things deepens the feeling.
Saying “I’m grateful for my partner” is meaningful but saying “I’m grateful my partner remembered to buy milk when I was swamped” is vivid and real. Specificity anchors gratitude in lived reality; it keeps the mind from generic platitudes and pulls memory forward when we are tempted to forget. This practice also helped me give better, more genuine thanks to others. A short, personalised message feels far more nourishing than a broad, vague “thanks.”
4. Gratitude grew from resilience, not avoidance
The 30s were not gentle years for everyone I knew. Loss, disappointments, and the grind of sustaining adulthood showed up with regularity. What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude is that gratitude doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. Real gratitude can coexist with grief and frustration. In fact, it often emerges from the work of resilience.
After tough days, I learned to hold both feelings: the anger at what went wrong and the appreciation for what remained. This layered way of feeling made space for deeper, more honest gratitude because it wasn’t a bypass; it was a choice made despite hardship. That choice felt less naïve and more courageous.
5. Gratitude moved me from scarcity to sufficiency
One of the cruellest mind-traps I wrestled with in my 20s was scarcity: the belief there was never enough time, money, affection, or success. What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude was the difference between scarcity and sufficiency. Gratitude didn’t magically fill bank accounts or extend hours, but it shifted perception.
Suddenly, I realised that I had enough kindness, enough opportunities to learn, and often enough resources to keep going. This didn’t mean settling for less or not striving; instead, it clarified what was worth striving for and helped me stop expending energy on the illusion of “never enough”.
6. Gratitude sharpened boundaries
There’s a romantic notion that gratitude means accepting everything with a smile. Over these few months, I learned that gratitude and boundaries are not enemies. What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude included the vital caveat that saying, “thank you”, is not the same as saying, “yes.”
When I started protecting my time and emotional energy, my gratitude deepened because it became a clearer, more conscious response rather than an automatic one. I began to appreciate people and experiences more because I was choosing them rather than tolerating them. That clarity made my gratitude feel more ethical and sustainable, a genuine “yes” rather than a resigned nod.
7. Gratitude became a way to steward relationships
I used to think gratitude was mostly private, a feeling that lived inside me. Being 30, I discovered its relational power. What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude is that expressing appreciation strengthens the people around you. Saying thank you to Julian, the barista at the hotel I stayed in Vienna, or sending a voice note to a friend who listened, had ripple effects.
People who feel seen and valued are more likely to show up again. This wasn’t about constant flattery but about recognising the effort of others and returning it with warmth. Over time, those moments of recognition built a network of reciprocity I hadn’t anticipated: favours returned, support given during emergencies, invitations extended in seasons I felt isolated.
8. Gratitude Taught Me Humility About Plans and Control
Once, I believed that meticulous planning would guarantee outcomes. The 30s humbled me. What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude is the difference between planning and control. Plans are practical; control is an illusion.
When projects failed or health plans shifted, practising gratitude instead of lashing out helped me reframe setbacks. I started to appreciate the lessons embedded in failure, the teachable bits that often come dressed as inconvenience.
That humility made me less brittle. I could say, with realness: “I’m disappointed, but I’m grateful for what I learned.” That sentence became a bridge between ambition and acceptance.
9. Gratitude Allowed Me To Celebrate Incremental Progress
In earlier years, I measured success by milestones, such as job titles, salary increases, and major launches. Now, What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude included a deep affection for the slow grind. I celebrated small, consistent progress: a healthier habit maintained for a month, a draft completed, and a difficult conversation held without defensiveness.
These small wins accumulated into larger, meaningful change. Practising gratitude for incremental steps made long-term goals less oppressive and more doable. It also protected me from tying my entire self-worth to single achievements; gratitude for small things reminded me that life is built out of many tiny, meaningful acts.
10. Gratitude Rewired My Future-facing Decisions
As I reflected on the coming years, gratitude began to shape my decisions. What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude is that when you lead from appreciation rather than anxiety, your decisions change shape: you invest in relationships, in rest, in work that aligns with values. I found myself choosing roles that respected my time because I appreciated what I’d already been given.
I turned down offers that required constant hustle for marginal gain because I valued stability and peace more. Gratitude didn’t make me complacent; it guided me to be selective and deliberate, and those decisions paid back in emotional dividends.
Conclusion
It would be nice if you were about to read through the 10 lessons. Regardless, if I had to distil everything into one sentence, What Being 30 Taught Me About Gratitude is that gratitude becomes more honest, more practised, and more powerful with age. It stops being about performance and starts being about presence. It doesn’t erase difficulty, but it changes how you meet it.
If you take one thing away, let it be this: start small. Name one thing today you’re genuinely grateful for and let it grow the next time you sit down with your thoughts. Gratitude in any age is not a trophy you have to earn; it’s a muscle you build with steady, loving attention.
