I had heard about journal writing and writing what you are grateful for every day. But I wanted to try for myself whether keep a gratitude journal really works. So I started my own experiment to see how it would change my approach to life if I wrote down what I was grateful for every day. With most things I hear about, I like to try it out myself to see how I feel about it. To determine whether its a fad or the real deal.
Experiment
My aim first was to just do the gratitude journal for 14 days. It takes 2 weeks to build a habit and I wanted to make this a habit. A part of my morning routine to change my perspective. The pandemic has everyone feeling a little low and I am no exception. I needed to change how being locked up in my house was making me feel. So I started my journal.
I wrote down 7 things I was grateful for that I already had. On a good sunny day, it could just be about how grateful I was feeling for the sunshine on my face and the warmth it was providing. If I ate a good meal I would write about how grateful I am for the meal and why. I wrote about being grateful for my family and friends.
I wrote down 3 things I did not have and wished for. Believing that positive thinking will help the universe conspire to make my dreams come true. I wrote in a positive way for example my body was hurting so instead of saying ‘I am grateful for my body not hurting’ I wrote ‘I am grateful for the healthy body I have and what it provides for me.’ We attract what we think of and that’s exactly what I was trying to achieve.
If you want to learn more about positive thinking and achieving what you want watch the documentary ‘The Secret’ on Netflix or read the book. It explains the theory better than I can in this blog.
Results
I am not going to tell you overnight I started achieving what I wanted. It takes a lot of time to change your mind frame and attract what you want. But I am determined and will continue.
Writing down what I was grateful for made me appreciate what I had. It made me realize how blessed I was. I started appreciating and thinking about the little things. Things like how beautiful the clouds looked in the sky. The 14 days turned into months and I kept going.
I am not going to be unrealistic and say it changed my whole life. But being grateful has improved my mood by at least 10 percent. It has made me more content with my life. There are studies that show this can rewire your brain and I believe the changes are being made slowly.
I know how important the perspective you have on life is. The story we tell ourselves about our life determines how we feel and our view on life. So writing down what I am grateful for is little by little changing my view on how I see my life.
Wrap up
I would recommend writing your grateful downs to anyone. We as humans tend to focus on the negatives and keep feeding ourselves the story that we have it bad. Make the change today start focusing on the good.
I am not saying don’t feel sad ever or deal with your negative emotions. Journal and vent about those too. They are emotions for a reason. To feel the highs, it is important to experience the lows as well. It is okay not to be okay sometimes. But always complaining about the little things will just attract more negative energy.
It is also important to appreciate the small things in life. Wake up and say I love my life and am grateful to be alive today for another day. It will take some time to get into this habit. But start small take it one day at a time. Don’t expect big changes overnight but once you start you will understand what I am talking about. Make gratitude journaling your goal.
So buy yourself a nice gratitude journal to write in and some fun pens. Get to work and slowly rewire your brain.
Find it hard to make any journal a gratitude journal? We have a list of best journals out there that you should try.
