Writing a Daily Gratitude Journal
I didn’t know about the magic of gratitude until a co-worker gave me a book on the subject. The Magic by Rhonda Byrne explains how feeling grateful has a powerful and positive impact on our thoughts. For a full month, I went through the book’s exercises and felt happier and more elevated than normal. Magical things started to happen. I found a necklace given to me as a child that had been lost for years. I seemed to be saved from certain circumstances just in the nick of time.
The book suggests that if you are grateful for what you have and focus on these things, the universe will reward you by giving you what you want. However, along the way I fell off the wagon. Things weren’t happening fast enough. I was grateful, but the things I really wanted weren’t coming my way. I began to lose hope in the whole process. My daily gratitude journal soon fell to the wayside and I went back to occasionally feeling unsatisfied.
Fast forward to a year later. I had a strong desire to start writing in my gratitude journal again, so I picked it up to start a new entry. Coincidentally, the last time I had written in it was exactly a year ago to the day! From reading my last entry, it seemed as if I was grateful for having made it through an extremely rough period in my life and was now on the upswing again. Since then I’ve found that the core purpose of being grateful isn’t to gain what you want but to feel happy with what you have at that moment.
Since this realization, my gratitude journal has been much easier to write in. There is always something to be grateful for and most of the time it has absolutely nothing to do with material things. It’s more about focusing on how fortunate I am because what I truly want is the feeling of being blessed and satisfied. I’m convinced that is what we are all really after.
We live in a society that rewards people who have an excess of money and material objects. In turn, it can be difficult to appreciate what we have, because our minds often drift to what we lack. While it’s healthy to have goals and intentions (I write in my Intention Journal on a daily basis) – don’t get discouraged when your intentions don’t arrive on the schedule that you want them. When you are patient and deeply grateful for the things you do have, the things you want will appear. When I look back on my life, I’ve pretty much-received everything I’ve wanted. It’s just taken a lot longer than I thought!
How to Create a Daily Gratitude Journal
- You don’t have to buy a fancy journal unless you want to. It’s what’s inside that matters.
- Write down three things you’re grateful for. These items can be anything you want.
- There are no rules with this journal. You can write one sentence or an entire journal entry about what you’re grateful for.
- After you finish writing, hold the journal to your chest and with your eyes closed, say thank you. Concentrate and feel your gratitude. I like to take a deep breath when I do this.
If you start your day like this, you’ll be surprised at how great you feel.
