I kept a gratitude journal twice a day for 3 years. Here’s what happened.
Science shows that feeling a sense of gratitude can rewire your brain to make you less anxious and increase your wellbeing. I started a gratitude journaling practice to see if it worked.
You get what you look for
I can’t remember where I heard it but I remember learning that Oprah Winfrey keeps journals exclusively to record her gratitude.
Though I don’t remember the exact source whether it was an article or a podcast, I definitely still remember the actual idea because the way she described it was so vivid.
She described her years of keeping up this simple practice of recollecting things she’s been grateful for every day in a diary, and how this has now become a collection of decades worth of physical notebooks that have captured her moments of gratitude across her life.
For someone who’s had such an against the odds rise, any idea they share is worth taking seriously and this was one for me.
The image of being able to pull out a physical journal from a shelf and look at a specific date and be able to see exactly what was great in life at a given time felt like a great way to capture your life’s history. I loved the idea and made a vow to give it a go.
That was in late 2018, and so ready for the new year I purchased myself an A5 diary with one page per day, and began my own gratitude recording process.
The gratitude process
I would start the day with three simple things that I’m grateful for. Things I’ve done nothing to have, they’ve just been present in my life, showing up like gifts. Things like my eye sight to today’s sunshine.
I’d then frame my day with three things that I need to do to make the day great. Three little wins.
Then I’d finish the morning entry with an affirmation. A sentence beginning with “I am..”. This would be a chance for me to think like my ideal future self and would be a good way to set off into the day.
Then just before bed I’d capture my three wins. Sometimes they were the ones I planned, other times they’d be completely different serendipitious moments I didn’t see coming.
I finish with something I may have done better and then an intention I want to create. This could be something material or otherwise, but the point to end with a want is to give the subconscious something to work on while I sleep.
The overall process was inspired by Tim Ferriss’s morning pages and then with a sprinkle of Dan Sullivan with the evening debrief.
Now into my fourth year and still going strong, here’s what I’ve noticed by keeping up this practice and what you may find if you were to try your own practice:
Easier appreciation of all moments big or small
- I can now appreciate the smallest of moments as a gift in itself. This can become helpful perspective for any experience you’ll face.
- Since gratitude journaling, my desire for things to go a certain way has decreased a lot. You may find that you’ll now be able to play a role of allowing and accepting rather than trying to always force and create.
- I don’t discriminate between moments so much now. You’ll see how special each little thing that happens actually is and realize you don’t need to worry what it might have been, you can accept what it was.
Accepting of adversity and it’s lessons
- I appreciate the struggles and hardships and welcome them into my life for the growth they bring.
- At the time of something unpleasant happening, let’s not lie our default thinking starts to move to negativity and catastrophising the event even further, but gratitude journaling forces you to find the good.
- Looking back for me, more personal growth has come from these unpleasant events than anything else, so there’s no need to try to avoid them. They’re going to happen to us, so use them to level up.
Lower happiness requirements
- My required expectations to feel happiness from outside of myself have gone. Anything good that you experience you realize after gratitude journaling, is a just a beautiful bonus. You’ll have very little/ no expectation (on good days) of others and what they 'should do’.
- There of course are recommended and expected standards that society has in people but I have learned to accept that people are planets. We are all individuals who have our own nature and way of being.
- To navigate this, simply accept that as a fact and focus on bringing your best self along to every situation you can, regardless of others reactions.
See value beyond what money can buy
- I now see a lot more value in things money can’t buy. Things like travel, being with friends, time alone, dinners, reading, walking. There are just countless ways we can spend time that energizes us without worrying about a price tag.
- Certain activities when you do them will have cost very little if not free, but upon reflection, you’ll see that some of them may have given you tremendous amounts of restoration and relaxation or other positive feelings. These are truly the things worth savouring.
Deeper appreciation of the luck I’ve been born into
- I now fully appreciate basic necessities that I was fortunately born into having access to. We didn’t ask to born into this period of time or into these families or into these societies but we are and we are so fortunate. We live better now on average than most people ever did.
- Remembering this fact puts the majority of our negative thoughts into perspective. It’s rarely as bad as we’re making out. Keeping this deep held appreciation of the luck we’re born into can really take the legs out of the low humdrum negative states you find yourself in. You’ll be there for very little time if you truly remember how lucky we all are right now.
I had no idea these mindsets would develop but I’m glad they have.
Am I perfect and am I able to stay in a great state all the time? Absolutely no way.
But I definitely am now better equipped than I’ve ever been to bounce back into a great state of mind sooner rather than later and I owe that to my gratitide journaling.
I hope you take this idea seriously and adopt it in a way that suits you that you can sustain, it’ll be well worth it. I promise.
