Truly Thankful: Keeping a Gratitude Journal

The world today is very crazy, very hectic, and very negative. The problem with negativity is that it is contagious; it only takes one person to affect an entire community. But how do you push the negativity back? How do you get rid of it?

One word: Gratitude.

Gratitude can change everything. It can improve attitudes and allow positivity to replace the negativity. It’s also very simple to practice and express. The hard part is being sincere in your gratitude. We’ve all been taught to be polite and say, “thank you” when someone does something for us. But has saying “thank you” become just what you say to come across as polite? Do you do it out of habit or do you mean it?

Think about the last time you were truly grateful for something or someone or “counted your blessings.” Was it last night, a few months ago, maybe it’s been years? Being grateful seems like it should come naturally but it can be hard to see through the more negative things in our lives to find the good. Life gets crazy and we sometimes feel as though nothing is going right for us. It’s during those times that practicing gratitude can make a situation a little brighter or a little less stressful.

Discovering all the things in your life for which you are grateful builds positivity into your life bit by bit. It causes a chain reaction in your life that allows you to find the good in the world. Even when things don’t go your way, you will be able to find some good in the situation for which to be grateful. This will take practice though.

Anything we do will get better with practice. Any skills we want to fine tune or sport we want to play better takes practice. To become the best we can at anything, we need to practice….and then use what we practice. Same applies to being grateful for everything in our lives. We have so much for which to be thankful. For example, if you are reading this, you should be thankful that you learned how to read and that you are able to see. Did thinking about reading and the ability to see make you think of other things you take for granted? Maybe you thought about your other senses or the librarian who helped you find your favorite book.

Challenge yourself this month to take five minutes each day to reflect on what you have in your life for which you feel thankful. Maybe you’ll be grateful for the support you receive from your loved ones one day and the next day you’ll be most thankful for the hug your child gave you or the bird that was singing in the tree outside your window.

Try keeping a journal, writing down what you were grateful for each day and when you’re having a bad day, you can go back and reflect on the people, places and things that have made your life wonderful.