The Gratitude Journal & the Gateway to Your Highest Self
By Tana M. Mann Easton, Lead Efficiency Engineer
When I was in high school, I watched an episode of Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in which she discussed keeping a gratitude journal. She said she would write down 5 things a day for which she was thankful. Something in that suggestion resonated in my heart, so I decided to start my own gratitude journal. I grabbed whatever blank notebook I had in my possession and started writing down what I was thankful for each day. I didn’t write essays. I wasn’t writing diary entries. It could just be 5 words. Some days I was grateful for “big” things: health, home, food, family. Some days I was grateful for “small” things: a specific flower that caught my eye, an uplifting conversation with a friend, a joke that made me laugh. I found in very little time that my worldview started to shift. Before the gratitude journal, my mind would tend to focus on the things that didn’t go right in my days. After the gratitude journal, my mind was always looking for and finding the good in my life. I found that every day, I could write for hours about the things I was grateful for. There were so many blessings to choose from.
I’ve now been writing my five things a day in my gratitude journal for over 20 years, and I can honestly say that I haven’t had a “bad” day since. I’ve certainly had challenges and tough times in those 20 years, but because I was training my brain (or activating my reticular activating system to become great at seeing amazingness every minute throughout a day) to look for the good (even in those challenges and tough times), I can never classify a day as bad. And that training of my brain was so easy. If you have a notebook and a writing utensil, then you have everything you need. I write in my gratitude journal at night before I go to bed so I can reflect on my whole day and give thanks for what it brought me. I write in small letters and utilize every centimeter of space in my notebooks to conserve paper (I’ve been writing in my current journal for about 14 years as a result). It takes me less than a minute to write down my five blessings every day, but that minute sets the tone for the rest of my day. That minute is my gateway into the deeper parts of myself and the world around me.
So if you have a notebook, a writing utensil, and a minute; consider starting a gratitude journal. It’s the most impactful habit that I have in my life. More and more studies are showing the benefits of gratitude in terms of our health. A gratitude journal isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to solve all of life’s challenges, but I would encourage anyone to try writing in a gratitude journal daily for at least a month and see if anything changes for you. I know that it completely transformed my life.
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Productively Yours,
Focus to Evolve Team