Gratitude vs. Appreciation

“What is the difference between Gratitude and Appreciation?” A lot of times people will use those two words – actually gratitude, appreciation, and thankfulness (or thankful) to mean the same thing.

Appreciation – I actually looked this up – the first definition of Appreciate was: gratitude (like that is going to help this discussion!) and thankful recognition. The example given was, “They showed their appreciation by giving him a gold watch.” So I think appreciation is actually something that is felt by somebody. You feel it as an individual; something that is internal to a person. So you will feel appreciation for something.

The definition of gratitude is, “the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful. He expressed his gratitude to everyone on the committee. Now to show can these can be interchangeable – we can be grateful for something in our lives, and not appreciate it. I am sure that you can think of something that you are happy that it is there but you may not be actively appreciating it. And the inverse is true: we can appreciate something without actually be grateful for it. And that is called Taking advantage of it. So if you just appreciate it and don’t acknowledge it and don’t do anything about it, some people may say you are taking advantage of it or you are taking it for granted.