What's a Gratitude Journal? Should I be keeping one?
Like most journals, you can make your Gratitude Journal your own. There are differences between a gratitude journal and a manifestation, travel, reading, dreaming, or other type of journal. As the name implies a Gratitude Journal has the specific goal of listing things you are grateful for. How you go about doing this is entirely up to you. If you like digital journaling you can even use photographs instead of words or a combination of both; if you prefer the traditional pen and paper, then you can use lists or write it as a story. Any method works because all methods require thinking about what we are grateful for. Every emotion has a unique vibration, the better we feel the higher the vibration; for example, a neutral emotion like boredom, has a higher vibration than pessimism and a lower one than contentment; as you might expect, the highest vibrations are in emotions such as love and gratitude. The exercise of writing out things you are grateful for is one of the quickest ways to get you out of a “funk” or calm a spinning mind, be it into restful sleep or clear motivation. So how do you do it?
Get a Journal
In order to get started it helps to have a Journal that inspires you, local books stores tend to have great selections, as does amazon. If you’re doing it digitally, use an App that allows for some customization so you can make it your own.
Chose when to write
If you have difficulty getting to sleep you may want to do it right before you lie down to go to sleep; you can follow through with a mental list after you lie down to help ease you into unconsciousness, but make sure you do the written one first; there is great value in seeing the words written in your handwriting. If it’s a difficult for you to getting going in the morning, write your list first thing after you wake up, or with your morning coffee; this will help you focus on the day ahead. You can, of course, do both!
Start small
Set a realistic goal for yourself. Start out with just 5 things you are grateful for. You can add more as you become aware of all the wonderful things we are fortunate to have. It could be something that happened through out the day, like the song of birds outside your window, or just simple things in life, often taken for granted, like that first cup of coffee; maybe the running hot water for your morning shower, or that the car didn’t break down of the way home from work. You’d be surprised what you will come up with once you give it a try!
Be consistent
Consistency is the key to success. It will take you 21 days to form the habit of keeping a daily gratitude journal, so for those first three weeks, find things that will anchor your new habit. For example, do it in between activities that you already have developed a habit with, after coffee but before showering; or after brushing your teeth but before reading your book.
The reason that we do a Gratitude journal rather then a Love journal is that while love is an active emotion, something we give, gratitude is a passive emotion, something we receive. Focusing on the things we are grateful for is the first step to receiving love, because it makes us acknowledge the things we have been given, this awareness in turn attracts more gifts!