The Power of Gratitude
Should you start a gratitude journal?
Have you been feeling a little. . .meh lately? Not bad, but not great? Want a powerful tool shift how you feel every day? Gratitude is key! This was probably one of the most important things I did to get myself back on track when life wasn’t feeling great. And why is it as powerful as I say? Why should you start? Because all the research shows that practicing gratitude has many benefits. Some include improving physical and psychological health, sleeping better, improves self-esteem, and it can even increase willpower, just to name a few.
"Something as simple as writing down three things you're grateful for every day for 21 days in a row significantly increases your level of optimism, and it holds for the next six months. The research is amazing," Harvard researcher and author Shawn Achor.
I had heard about gratitude journaling, but it took me a while until I tried it. And seriously, it was the missing link. Through gratitude, I started seeing my world through a different lens.
Before journaling, I had a dialogue of how tough motherhood was, and how it wasn’t fair the things I had to do for my kid’s health, and how I am the only mom dealing with challenging personalities in my kids. (Hello martyr!)
But as I hopped in bed each night and pulled out my gratitude journal, suddenly, I could think of several things I was grateful for. Nothing in my life changed, but suddenly the way I saw things in my life changed. I was pausing on the good, taking a moment to soak it in and notice it. What began as a practice I did at night, started to morph into my days. I started noticing the good things as they were happening during the day. And that awareness brought the tiniest sparks of joy that weren’t there previously.
Gratitude breeds happiness.
When you practice gratitude, you're placing your thoughts and intention on what is going right and good in your life. Our brains naturally want to see all the negative as a survival mechanism, but it is easy for our minds to spin out of control with negative thoughts and no longer serve us, but cause undo stress and anxiety. No Bueno! But when we look for the good, we find it. The more we acknowledge the good in our lives, the less room there is for negative thoughts and beliefs.
How can you add gratitude journaling?
1.) Go buy a cute notebook (because who doesn’t love an excuse to buy cute things).
2.) Find a time that you can consistently journal (mine was at night). Having a daily (or near daily, because we’re human) practice is best, because the more you do it, the more it starts to shift your perspective. (Side note: if you can’t or don’t journal daily, don’t stress. Just do what you can do. Any gratitude is better than no gratitude. And again, human 😉).
3.) List 3-5 things that you are grateful for. I did bullet points, but write it however works for you. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. Somedays, it was a cute thing my kids did, or a good conservation with a friend, or the sun shining, or the new book that came, or a great podcast I listened to. Find anything to be grateful for. And if it is challenging to find things to be grateful for, just try, because it will get easier the more you do it.