I always believed gratitude was a good thing, and regularly expressed thanks when it was due.
But the ‘gratitude practice’ of writing down daily all the things you’re grateful for – I resisted. Perhaps it was because Oprah encouraged it and anything Oprah recommended was too mainstream for me. Perhaps it was because everyone touted keeping a gratitude journal and I didn’t want to be like everyone else.
I have a rebellious streak in me, and for that I am grateful.
Last year, I received some positive psychology training as part of the Good Life Project. We were taught to keep an eye on our mindset through various practices, including, yes, a gratitude practice.
I grumpily tried it. It worked, and for awhile, I did feel happier. Then I stopped, and I became less happy.
I began to see how powerful our internal circumstances are compared to external causes for happiness. This summer, I resumed the gratitude practice.
I finally found something that worked for me – a special Jill Bliss journal by my bedside. Every night I list five things I am grateful for. It’s mysterious, but I do believe this practice makes a difference in my day-to-day well being.
But this is what it takes for something to work for me – I have to experience it. I can’t just believe in it because someone tells me to do it. (I reserve the right to rebel about other things!) More on this in my annual report, coming out next month. For now, my gratitude for you, my reader.
Five thank yous
Thank you for reading my writing. Without you, my writing is nothing.
Thank you for sharing with your friends. Without them, you create in a vacuum.
Thank you for being you. Without you, the world is incomplete.
Thank you for being brave enough to make your art. WIthout it, the world vibrates a little less.
Thank you for sharing your creative work. Without it, we miss out on your essence.
Happy Thanksgiving, Americans.
Do you have a gratitude practice? Have you seen an impact on your happiness?
I tried it for a while, then stopped. Some days I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find something to write. You’ve convinced me to try again.
Sherri,
Yes, try it again and see if you notice any difference in your life. That’s the thing that keeps me going on practices – feeling and seeing discernible results.
My journal isn’t always woo!!! woo!! Often it’s kinda rote. I am okay with that. I also think it’s the scraping the bottom days that we need it most, don’t you think?
Glad this encouraged you to try again. 🙂
Yes, I have a daily gratitude practice. I switched from listing them at night on a pad by my bed to using a “gratitude journal” mobile app first thing in the morning. I do not try to make it exciting or imaginative. Often the list is similar from one day to the next. The difference is amazing. I think that remembering in the morning some of the mundane things and regular people who are in our life – as well as the larger ones – has a significant impact on how I feel as I approach the day. For all of my life I have felt that you pretty much decide what kind of day you’re going to have when you get up in the morning. This practice pretty much guarantees that you start of with a great attitude and a feeling of all wellness and competence. Nothing really changes, but everything is different. I could go on and on. I have honored this practice for over two years. It doesn’t take long, it is only for your eyes, it keeps a positive focus and your smile can change someone’s world.
Betty,
Thanks for chiming in on this! I am always interested in knowing what works for others, and this time of day element is a big one, I think. I totally agree that having a positive way to start the day can be life-changing.
I might play with my practice based on your comment. I do a morning meditation first thing, and it might be fun to bring in part of the gratitude practice, either writing or thinking about it.
“Nothing changes, but everything is different.” That’s like some kind of Koan – a simple but complex truthful puzzle.
Thanks again for sharing your process; I know it’s made me think about this more.
With gratitude for you!
Thank YOU for being YOU, Cynthia. And thank you for the reminder of the gratitude journal. I’ve done this off and on…it does work. Now I need to get back “on” again.
Thank you, Barb! I’m grateful for you, too.
It seems most of our practices are like this – they come and go. I think it’s best to just keep hitting refresh when you can and pay attention to what’s working in your ecosystem.
Enjoy being back on, if it works for you!
Interestingly, I just wrote a piece on gratitude and the difficulties of gratitude practice when you feel unworthy. “To feel gratitude when you feel unworthy is no easy task. You’d think it would be the opposite, that the unworthy would be grateful for everything to the point of obsequiousness. That the unworthy would kowtow and pull their forelocks relentlessly for being allowed to live and breathe, let alone receive any bounty of joy, beauty, fulfilment, whatever.
The truth is that the unworthy do not feel any of it is for them…”
There is more (obviously) but I wrote it because I found that gratitude journals and gratitude practice do not work so well for me. There is no joy in it when you feel unworthy – rather you feel guilty and somewhat of a fraud.
Karen,
Thanks for sharing your perspective. It makes me curious about this sense of unworthiness. You may not want to respond here, but unworthy of what? A good life? Feeling good? Good things happening?
I guess it’s hard for me to understand unworthiness. I have plenty of my own emotional gunk to sort through, but that’s not one of the gunk threads. I believe we’re all worthy of a good and decent life, every single one of us.
I know there have been days in my gratitude journal where I was just filling in the blanks, even writing at the bottom “I hate my $#$&$ life!” I know there are many, many days when I show up on my meditation cushion and I am sitting there thinking about my day and what I will eat. Not being zen or mellow at all.
I know I’m not perfect, though, and that many days the baseline of what I can expect is simply to show up as I am, fully flawed, fully human.
I’m certainly not trying to get you to do a gratitude practice; I know how it feels when someone (seems like everyone else) says, You need to do this!!
What I do know is in the last few years I have looked at people whom I admire and know to be more fully engaged with life and I sidled up and asked them what they did. I was reluctant to adopt some of their practices, and I’ll share more about this in my annual report, but I have to say, some of that stuff worked.
I wish the best for you and your creative pursuits. I always appreciate your honesty and self-awareness and integrity.
Unworthy of what? A good life? Feeling good? Good things happening? All of the above!
I’m only just beginning to be aware how unworthy I feel. My father died when I was a toddler and my mother was very resentful of being left alone to raise to a child – something she seemed to take out on me. Plus the other women in my family (and there were only women) were very judgmental. Nothing I did was ever good enough. Everything had to be earned.
My mother was a very confusing woman to be around – on one hand she let me go to dance lessons then avoided every dance performance I did. She bought me books to read and encouraged me to write then refused to read anything I’d written even when my writing won prizes at school. Very confusing.
I rebelled in my teens, made some very bad mistakes and felt my mother’s disappointment in me was justified. Yet by my late teens, I realised the effect of all this. I’ve spent my life attempting to deal with it. Every time I think I’ve got it licked, I realise that I’ve only made one small step forward, which is good, I know that. But it is also frustrating as I realise I still have a long way to go – and I am not getting any younger.
The worse part is that I long for validation. I long for my efforts to pay off, to have a job I love, to be acknowledged, yikes, even paid for my writing, to have really good things happen to me (beyond being grateful that the bus came on time this morning), yet my own feelings that I just don’t deserve any of it get in the way.
Thank your for your good wishes and for appreciating my honesty, self-awareness and integrity. I actually do feel I have earned that.
P.S. Had a giggle about you sitting on your meditation cushion and wondering what you would eat. Oh so been there!
I wanted to join the conversation but I don’t really do a gratitude thing. It’s too Pollyannaish to me. Like a Hallmark card. One thing I do is be thankful for various things we have, like eye doctors and eye glasses, dentists when I break a tooth, libraries and the ability to read, the opportunity to travel, my friends after a lovely dinner party. I think about being thankful when the occasion happens rather than at the end of each day.
One strange grateful moment was all this month after traveling most of October. I was happy to be home in my little LA suburb surrounded by my mountains. It was the first time I was happy to be back after a trip. I am truly spoiled living in California. Clean, progressive, beautiful.
I started a gratitude journal when I was taking a marketing class with Alyson B. Stanfied, it is the first lesson in her classes. It seemed like a weird thing to do in a marketing class. I found then that even when everything in my life seemed wrong I could find at least one thing to be thankful for. That was two years ago and I have continued the practice.
In October I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now, I am completely thankful to have developed the habit of gratitude. This adversity is a challenge, yet when I seek daily gratitude there are always a handful of blessings to be found. I think giving thanks is a key to joy, mental, physical, spiritual healing and strength.
I’m thankful for…
My husband.
Friends
Community
Love and prayer.
Cozy home.