By now you’ve probably heard of the many benefits of gratitude journaling. I started gratitude journaling in 2016 when I randomly bought a little A6 gratitude journal that was on sale. Who would have known that random purchase 6 years ago would lead me to being an advocate of this Practice!
At first, I wrote in it very sporadically, only when I really felt like it – it was only recently during covid that I made a conscious intention to write every day. I can tell you it’s made such a difference in how I think about the world.
So what is the practice of gratitude?
The practice of gratitude is simply focusing on the areas in your life that you’re grateful for and writing them down. It can be anything big or small - like being grateful for your morning coffee to the special person in your life. I usually write down 3 a day but feel free to be generous in this area if you’re really feeling it on a particular day. Also don’t restrict yourself to just words, you can let loose your creativity and draw it, flow chart it or stick pictures in your notebook, anything that would help you capture the gratitude that you feel. We all know what ‘grateful’ feels like so the intention is to capture that ‘grateful’ feeling.
What are the benefits?
The reason why I call it ‘practice’ is we're practicing to be grateful for what we already have in our lives, since we as humans are automatically wired to have a negativity bias. The more you practice it the more you’ll notice the feeling of gratitude overrides the automatic negative bias we have.
The practice of gratitude has been scientifically researched in the area of positive psychology and they found clear differences in participants who practiced daily gratitude and their feelings of wellbeing and life satisfaction, compared to the control group. It was found that the participants who practiced gratitude every day for 2 weeks have a higher level of happiness, wellbeing and life satisfaction than those who did not. So it only took 2 weeks to feel the benefits!
Here’s a good reference that would lead you to other studies done in this area if you would like to read more about the research – click here.
From my own personal experience, I can tell you what I got from it is a sense of calm and being at peace with myself, with others and my circumstance. I have an incredibly negative inner voice and the practice of gratitude has helped me take control of it.
Here’s how I use it to my advantage:
- When I feel insecure or I feel like I’m not enough, I write down what I love about myself and what I’m great at
- When I’m angry at someone, I write down what qualities I appreciate in them. This can be hard sometimes but trust the process!
- When something bad happens I write down what I learnt from it
Your thoughts contribute in how you feel and what you do, so it’s my intention to feed my thoughts with positive energy. It doesn’t take much time to do this, I spend 5-10 minutes in the morning to write what I’m grateful for.
If you’re thinking about giving this a try, I say why not?? It’s a low investment in time, effort and money with the possibility of many benefits, you have nothing to lose. You can download our 30 Day Gratitude Challenge for free and try it out or check out our premium range of linen Gratitude Journals here.
Happy journaling!
H.Sung
Founder, Freetobeing