Honestly, if there was some thing I’d swear by forever it’d be gratitude journaling. Journaling as a whole is life-changing, but coupling that good work with gratitude is a mind-changer; and one key addition to turning things around for yourself is changing your mind!
First off, let’s touch on why journaling is so important in the first place. You’ve probably heard so much talk about it over the course of your life, I mean you probably even already journal. Which, if you do, kudos to you and your free-thinking!
In my opinion, journaling brings on a different meaning to your life. It’s like saying to yourself “you mean so much to me that I wanna write about how you feel and your daily life experiences”. Writing things down like your dreams, experiences, struggles, achievements, goals or prayers show a desire to connect with yourself; it says you want to get to know you! Writing these things down also gives you a safe space to gain clarity of your thoughts and process your emotions. We might assume we are doing these things when we call a friend to vent or ask the internet for advice, but how can someone else give you more clarity over your thoughts than yourself? How can someone else help you process your emotions and they’ve got their own unprocessed emotions?
Secondly, being able to read over your past sentiments and views is like gaining a deeper insight into how far you’ve come in terms of how you perceive the world you live in. I mean we’re all living on earth, but honestly, in our own worlds. This gives us a chance to reassess how we actually want to experience life, how we want to show up and our beliefs about what we’re really here for. I feel like this sounds real deep but it is so true. This is why I like gratitude journaling though, because keeping record of those experiences, whether good or bad, has made it one of my heaviest tools in the process of reinventing me. You can tell yourself everything under the sun about who you are and how you are showing up but actually having record of how you mind thinks can be on of your biggest assets in terms of rediscovering and connecting with yourself.
Gratitude journaling sorta looks like how it sounds, fortunately. It’s all about writing and recounting your day’s experience and concluding it from a place of gratitude. For me, that conclusion looks like a list of things I’m grateful for.
Here are a few examples:
“Today was a rest day; pretty dull. I thank the source for this day. I so am grateful for the bed I rested in, I am grateful for the food I ate, I am grateful for the ability to lounge in cool A/C and comfortable shelter. I am grateful for the conversation I had with a friend earlier…”
“I had to come and write about this good news, today was such an amazing day! I am grateful for all of those wonderful experiences, I’m very grateful for the abundance to indulge in greatness I was surrounded by, I am grateful for all of the information I was afforded to learn, I’m grateful for the love I was surrounded by and all the pictures taken with me smiling in them!”
That list at the end is usually centered around the journal entry and the things I touched on when recounting my day. Though, it doesn’t have to always be that way, they can be general things you’re grateful for. I always told myself to just try and write three. Doing this would bring even more things to mind, leaving me somedays with a very hefty list of things to be grateful for.
I did gratitude journaling for close to two years while I was battling homelessness. I didn’t want my mind to succumb to my environment so I reached for my journal again and one day I was so overwhelmed I just started writing down the things I was grateful for in the here and now. That was the day I realized I had a choice of what I wanted to turn my attention to. Things were not perfect but I also was not dead. In the beginning it was challenging to recount from a place of gratitude, by no means am I saying this is easy work but this type of journaling helped to will me out of my darkest moments; it aided in the remembrance of my own wellness. Years later when I would reread some of those entries I would get empowered remembering the strength I held through one of the darkest times of my life. In the midst of it all gratitude journaling kept the light on at the end of the tunnel. It can be easy to fall victim to circumstance and wallow in uncomfortable places, but remembering what you have to be grateful for trains your brain to stay strong and your heart to be less heavy. Gratitude journaling is for learning how to teach yourself that you’re still okay even when you’re not okay.
