Pancakes on Sunday mornings. Hot yoga. Good hair days. My loving family and friends. Warm summer nights. The smell of my shampoo. Shorts and sweatshirt weather. Binge watching "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Clothes fresh out of the dryer. Late-night chats with my roommate. Running into a familiar face on my way to class. Days with no homework.
Okay, that last one was unrealistic, but the list goes on.
These are some of the entries from my gratitude journal that I started keeping last week. Every night before I went to bed, I would jot down however many or few things I could think of that I felt grateful for that day. Depending on my mood (and how tired I was), the list was either pages long or only a couple of bullet points. However, I made a point of writing in my little yellow notebook every single night.
The purpose of a gratitude journal is to remind yourself of the good things in your life and make gratitude a priority.
In doing so, the idea is that you will be generally happier, so when adversity comes your way, you can handle it better, and it won't have as large an effect on your well-being. It has been proven that keeping a gratitude journal has positive effects on your physical, mental, and emotional health. It also improves self-esteem and reduces stress.
Yes, please.
One of my high school teachers encouraged us to start a gratitude journal last year, and I did it for maybe five days and then forgot about it. I'd write in it sometimes throughout the year, but I was really only doing it to complete an assignment rather than to actually try and improve my life. Writing in the journal should be something you are doing for yourself, not anyone else. Otherwise, it probably won't work.
A good thing about keeping a gratitude journal is that it isn't high stakes. If you forget a day, so be it. It's not a homework assignment, so don't think of it like that. Simply carve out a few minutes each day, and soon enough it will become routine. It's solely meant to improve your well-being, and what's more, it's easy to do.
Writing in the notebook also gave me a way to do something besides scrolling through Instagram for the millionth time that day or sending pointless, captionless Snaps of my face to my friends right before I went to bed. I found that it was not only easier for me to fall asleep, but I went to sleep happier because I had just been reminiscing about things I was thankful for that day. On top of all that, it was simply fun to write down some of my daily happiness.
Keeping a gratitude journal certainly helps those who are going through something tough, but that's not only who it's for. You may not be overcoming a significant problem right now, but no one lives a completely stress-free life. Just because you aren't facing some great adversity, doesn't mean you can't reap in the benefits of writing down some things you are thankful for.
I challenge you: for at least the next couple of nights, find anything—a notebook, a post-it, the notes app on your phone—and jot down however many things you can think of that you're grateful for at that moment in time. Go a step further and say why you're thankful for those things. It takes literally three minutes. I guarantee only good will come of it, and you will want to continue.
So start a gratitude journal. You'll be grateful you did.
