Gratitude Practice
What to expect from this newsletter
For the handful of people who have subscribed, thank you! And let me give an idea of what I hope to accomplish with this newsletter. This newsletter is inspired by a course I took called The Science of Well-Being, in which students receive weekly “rewirements”. Rewirements are new habits to try that week.
I found it very helpful to get fresh ideas to try weekly, so I wanted to find a way to provide that aspect of the course in a simpler, lower-commitment way. So my plan is to provide one idea to try each week, an experiment. And my hope is that most people will find that at least some of the ideas fit into their lives and actually improve their lives. I plan to publish every Sunday.
This week’s experiment
Feeling gratitude is really good for you. We all know it. So how can we make it part of our everyday lives? Ideally, we would feel gratitude every single day. So we need to design it into our routines in such a way that we do it consistently.
What's worked for me is to have a journal template which includes a section for gratitude. Then when I look back over the day, I always remember to put down something I'm grateful for. I've found that there's always something or someone to be grateful for.
It feels so good and so right that it's very easy to do it consistently. So you might want to try something bigger in addition to the daily practice.
One of the exercises in the Science of Well-Being course I'm taking is to write and deliver a gratitude letter (here's a description). I found this an intimidating task to take on all at once, so I've been gradually building up a list of things I'm grateful for about the people in my life. It's probably better to do it in one shot, though, as my progress has been sporadic.
Any amount of gratitude practice you do will be good for you, so it's worth trying. See if it works for you!