But in context above, where the gratitude meditation was brought in by Phyllo, it had to do with the practical issue of choosing thoughts that work for you. You asked for how this could work for him, he mentioned the journals. Now it might have made you happier if he had said specifically what it did for him, but there is research that shows that doing this works and that one can consciously change thoughts over time.
How is this relevant to your topic?
Well, you refer to where you are as a hole. That metaphor tends to mean, between humans, a place with negative aspects, unpleasant ones. So you have been bringing in emotions through that. You have also talked about how objectivists- that is anyone who disagrees with you, whether they are objectivists or not - are afraid when heading to your hole via your powerful rhetoric. In this context, showing that there is a way out of the hole, one that neither contradicts your non-objectivism nor contradicts objectivism in general, is relevant to the context you have presented the issue.
IOW you can either try to show that this way of getting out of the hole does not work OR you should, it seems to me, never again mention the hole and that you’d want to get out of it AS IF the only way out is to have your dilemma of contrasting goods solved. You don’t need to give up the issue of conflicting goods and that conundrum, but you can stop presenting the issue in the context of the hold, other people’s fears, your bravery for staying in the hole and facing it and so on.
If you try the gratitude journal for a significant amount of time - or any of a bunch of other approaches, including ones by non-objectivist buddhists, say - and you still find yourself in an emotional hole, you could ask for more help with that, but it is a separate issue.
The whole brave nihilist in the hole where others fear to tread self-presentation game is a farce you can drop. One does not have to be in the hole, even if one does not solve that conundrum, though you could keep it up for intellectual reasons, never fear.