As 2019 ended, I was not in a good place in life. My mind was full of dark and sad thoughts. Despair was my constant companion. I was aware changes were needed in my life. My resources were very limited, there was much I could not do. However I knew I could seek a beautiful state of being. Peace was something I knew I could seek. I knew that there was much to be grateful for in my life. So I started writing about things I was grateful. For a while I published a daily short blogpost about something I was grateful for. This simple daily practice of gratitude unlocked new positive mindsets that is changing my life.
For years I had heard people talk about practicing gratitude. It is only recently that I started to think about what that even meant. For me, the idea of “practicing” something means some sort of repeated act. Practice also to me implies some measure of effort. I knew I wanted to practice gratitude, but I had to find a way to do it my own way.
I did not feel as though putting a list of 3 things I was grateful for in a journal was the way I wanted to approach a gratitude practice. That seemed too easy to me and it seemed like I could cheat at that. A public blogpost, well in my mind that meant I had to put a little bit into that. Doing a daily blogpost meant I would have to think and really experience the gratitude to write about it. So that’s what I did, I started to write blogposts about things I was grateful for.
I did this for the first 67 days of the year. I published every single day during that span of time. I simply wrote a little bit about something I was grateful for. These were just my thoughts, I didn’t heavily edit them, I just wrote and published and moved on with my day. After that first 67 days I stopped publishing daily. I have published a few more of these gratitude blogposts since then. I ran out of steam a little bit with the daily publishing, but it is something I would very much like to return to for another long run sometime in the future. The benefits of these posts have stuck with me fairly well though. My mind was now wired for a more grateful and positive mindset.
I wrote about so many different things doing this experiment. Few of the posts were about anything that I possessed of any “economic” value. There were posts about possessing things like good cheese or blueberries, but no posts about having a super expensive phone or anything like that. Possession really isn’t correlated to gratitude for me. It’s not what matters to me. I want nice and good things, but that is not where my focus is.
My focus was much more on the simple beauty of this life. I was grateful for a lot of things I had done, for smart actions I had taken. I was grateful for the risks I had taken. It is good to be grateful for making right choices. My gratefulness extended beyond myself too as I got deeper into this way of thinking.
As I experienced and basked in gratefulness I became more aware and grateful for the gifts from God I had been given. My thoughts are now constantly drawn towards family, friendship, nature, and community. These all hold so many gifts and I cannot even hardly describe how grateful I am for them. God has given me so much, and it gives me great peace to recognize this.
The practice of gratitude has given me many benefits. It has rewired my brain in a much more positive place. I feel as though I am constantly getting a shower of positivity. When I am not having a good day, doing these writings forces me into a more positive frame. I cannot do these writings without being in a positive place and literally experiencing the gratitude. The following benefits I shall discus are simple, but have been great and wonderful for me. These benefits have been what I needed in my life.
More Positivity
The diligent practice of gratitude is a positive thing. All this writing about positive things has moved my mind into a positive place. I don’t think you can be focused on both the negative and positive at the same time so my brain is forced by this project to focus on the positive. This is a wonderful thing. I have even started to smile spontaneously. I also feel as though there is just much less weighing on me mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Recognition of The Good
Writing all these posts has trained my brain to recognize all the things I can be grateful for. Since I was writing every day for a couple months on this one thing, I had to look everywhere for inspiration. This was great because now my mind does this automatically all the time. I literally am finding things all the time to be grateful for. Once I was finding all these things, it was hard to dwell on negative things.
More Peace
Being in a more positive state and being focused on positive things is a peaceful way to live. My mind has been far more at peace so far this year than it has been in many years. I credit this peace to this gratitude practice I have adopted.
I Weather The Storms Better
Life is always going to throw us adversity and trials. I seem to be weathering these storms a lot easier with my new mindset and positivity. As I write this, we are going through the COVID-19 epidemic. This is a huge test, and I am weathering it rather well. I am at peace as much as I can be with the state of the world. I would like things to be very different than they are right now, but I don’t allow that to drive my state into a bad place. I am handling all this pandemic fear so much better than I would have handled it a year ago. For that I am grateful.
I Learned it’s NOT About Being Happy
Through all this I have learned that you can be positive without being all that happy. I am not the happiest of people but I can still be in a good place emotionally. There is much about life I am not happy with. I still feel that right now I spend much of my time in a very positive place. There are many ways to be positive without happiness. Positive does not equal happy, and that is something I am learning. I can be positive, and not feel happiness, and that is ok.
These benefits all seem to have stuck with me fairly well even though I am not currently writing these posts daily anymore. The changes have been made and I am doing enough blogposts still to keep those benefits going. Some days I will write part of a post and toss it away, I just post what seems right to me. A post every week or two seems to be enough maintenance for me. I do miss the daily posting, and feel as though I will return to it.
The constant daily writing allowed and even forced me to have a beautiful, wonderful and pure though every single day. That is something too few of us experience. By writing about these things I dove deep into them and very much experienced intense positive emotion around thee things I wrote about. Often when I would finish I was physically tired, I was experiencing that much emotion around the things I felt.
What I wrote about was not everything I was grateful for. I didn’t write about my friends or family. I feel so deeply and intensely about them I didn’t know how to even articulate my gratitude about them, and our relationships. This may change in the future, but so far I have not had the time and focus to really do them justice in my writing. Many of the things I was grateful for seemed simple, but there are far more things I am grateful for.
Current Status of The Practice
As of May 5th 2020 I am in a holding pattern in a lot of ways with this gratitude practice. I am still doing some writing of blogposts around the topic. If I don’t feel they are good for publishing I simply throw them away. I am no longer putting pressure on myself to publish often. I am still very focused on my gratitude though.
I was very stressed finishing my book I was writing so I deciding to take a break off the daily publishing. Then COVID-19 hit and my ability to find quiet time to write is dubious at best many days. I think a break was good, because I don’t thin there is any reason to put pressure on myself right now. The world is putting enough pressure on me as it is with the pandemic.
Future Of The Practice
The future of my gratitude practice feels as though it is a bright one. I feel that I will revisit these gratitude writings and experience the benefits and growth of this habits again. I feel a pull towards doing these writings. I feel full of excitement about what gratitude practices can do for me in the future. I am also left with questions I wish to explore.
Did my benefits level off or could I have kept going and gotten to an even more positive place?
What other forms of practice can gratitude take other than writing?
What is the most practical and beneficial frequency of such practices?
In the future I would like to give 100 straight days of posting gratitude blogposts a try. I would also like to try and do these posts for a whole year. I hope I find a good time in life to explore these options more.
Another form of gratitude I would like to explore is more outwardly expressing gratitude towards others. I don’t think I show enough gratitude towards others. I wonder what my state would be if I more outwardly expressed such gratitude. I wonder if it such a practice would help lift others up to a positive place as well.
How To Do Your Own Practice
If this all sounds like something you might like to try, I have ideas for you!
First you need to make this all fit your life and personality. How you express gratitude might be different than me. I use blogpost writing. You might want to journal someplace that no one will ever read it. You might express your gratitude through prayer. You might just keep a little list you add to and read from time to time.
I recommend letting this all come natural. If you’re grateful for the fact you had a good tasting banana this morning and that’s what comes to mind, then go with it. I feel like this is about letting yourself experience these emotions and states, so if you experience that towards a banana, and towards something more profound the next day like your grandparents, that is cool. This is all for you and by letting it be for you, you are better for others.
Being in a more positive place will serve you will in so many ways. It is a more peaceful and beautiful way to live. Thank you for reading this far, I’m grateful you gifted me the time it took you to read this little article.