Celebrities swear by it but does practicing daily gratitude actually work for normal people?
While I was growing up, I had a bit of a mean streak. I would suppress my anger for days, and then the slightest thing would cause me to lash out at my family. I’d keep my feelings to myself if I were picked on at school, but the minute my brother teased me at home, I would go nuclear on him. After one of these outbursts and in an attempt to avoid the next screaming match, my mother told me to "write out my feelings" She gave me a blue journal she had been gifted years ago.
In it was a "gratitude list" she’d written and forgotten about, with ten things she was grateful for, including the rain, our cats, my father, and her children. This was not uncommon in our home; my mother would often purchase journals and would leave them somewhere in the house and forget about them. At thirteen years old, I did not listen to my mother’s advice and did not see the point in writing my thoughts. Gratitude journalism seemed even worse, too sickly sweet to ever make me feel better. Of course, I was a rage-filled teen.
Years later, before starting my college year, I came across another one of my mother’s lists, and it looked different to me. Gratitude no longer seemed like it was some fluffy pseudo-science that celebrities glorified. I’d read numerous articles that spouted off the benefits of gratitude journaling, and how it helped people overcome hardship, appreciate good experiences, and improve relationships. I decided to take the jump and start my own gratitude journal, this time a little more receptive.
Sitting at my desk in my shared room, I pulled out a little notebook my sister gave me for my birthday and stared at the blank page. I was completely and utterly lost; at that moment, I could not think of anything to list. While I knew I was grateful for numerous things like my family, my friends, and the sunny weather, it felt superficial and fake to write those things down because they felt almost too easy. I decided my best bet was to google “gratitude journal prompts,” and I selected a list of 101 gratitude journal prompts.
For the first entry in my gratitude journal, I decided to lob myself a softball and start easy with “What makes you appreciate your job the most?” For me, this was a straightforward prompt because I have always enjoyed the work I do at the library. I spent the first night writing a paragraph about how grateful I was that my supervisors allowed me to express my creativity with new projects and how much their advice has helped me prepare for future job opportunities. This post did not take any mental effort because I already recognized what I was grateful for when it came to my job. But after I wrote it down, I felt surprisingly happier, which was not something I expected.
Dr. Robert Emmons, an American psychologist and a leader in the positive psychology movement, said that there are three parts to gratitude: recognizing what you’re grateful for, acknowledging it, and appreciating it. First, by recognizing that there is something to be grateful for, you confirm that there are good things in the world. After this, you should reflect on how this positive thing has helped you or made you happy and acknowledge this. Finally, when you look for where the positive thing comes from and find its source, you can appreciate the reason it exists. In his research, he has had people keep gratitude journals for three weeks and seen results physically with lower blood pressure and better sleep, psychologically with more alertness and optimism, and socially with people being more forgiving and more outgoing.
I continued this non-strenuous writing dump for the following six journal entries, each time with another prompt. I wrote about my favorite song (Will Leet’s Alice), what made people beautiful (confidence), and what my favorite meal was (grandmother’s espetada). I noticed that I was enjoying this self-contemplative exercise, but while I was enjoying it because it got me to think more positively, I didn’t feel that I was actively discovering positive things through the prompts. I was just picking surface-level “easy” things to be grateful for
Who Has A Favorite Smell???
I wanted to challenge myself and decided to select the “uncomfortable” prompts. First, I reflected on “What is your favorite smell, and how does it stir your emotions?” I quickly discovered that I am not positive about my favorite smell but settled on my dad’s cologne because he has used it for years, and it reminds me of home and feeling safe. Reflecting on this made me homesick, and I proceeded to call my family and Facetime them for a good hour.
I did feel more challenged, which was exactly what I wanted. Not on the top of my head immediately. It took some thinking. But still, I wanted something harder. Would I be able to find gratitude in not just something that wasn’t obvious to me but in something that was actively painful? That’s why I chose my next challenge: My last prompt was the most difficult for me, and I picked it for that reason. I chose a prompt that made me think about a former friend: “who is one person you can’t stand? Now write down anything you can learn to love about them.”
“who is one person you can’t stand? Now write down anything you can learn to love about them.”
I do not like looking back on this period of my life. When I met this friend, I was still a very sheltered person, and I was struggling to meet people at school because of this. During our friendship, they helped me come out of my shell, and with their encouragement, I became more confident and bold. During the first two years of our friendship, we were extremely close, but when I came back that third-year, things were different. Looking back, while writing the prompt, I started wondering was our friendship ended because I didn’t stay shy and quiet.
It was a tough question to answer. I was forced to look back on my relationship with my ex-friend and remember why I had been friends with them for four years, even though I knew it was the right decision to let the friendship die. I had continuously made excuses for why they would treat me poorly and tried to find reasons to remain friends, but it had finally reached a breaking point, and afterward, I harbored significant anger and sadness.
I Am Worth More
This prompt ended up being more of an open letter to them instead of an impersonal essay. I wrote about the memories we had made over the years and how much I had enjoyed our friendship in the beginning. I was grateful for them encouraging me to come out of my shell and be more confident. But then the tone shifted; I started writing about how, as the friendship progressed, I realized that I was investing more in this friendship than they were. If I didn’t call first, they would “forget me” even though they insisted I was one of their close friends. Finally, I realized how thankful I was for what that relationship taught me about what I would and wouldn’t accept in a friendship.
Finally, I had some semblance of closure. Not long after I finished the prompt, I deleted their number and muted them on social media. I knew that they would never see this letter and that I would never tell them what I wrote, but this was my final goodbye. While completing the prompt was originally depressing, I felt euphoric when I was finished. And I realized maybe this is why my mother was so dedicated to gratitude journaling.
After this experiment, I have a new appreciation for gratitude journaling and a better understanding of my mother’s suggestion. While I was growing up, my father was an active-duty marine. He was frequently deployed, and during his deployments, my mother was basically a single parent to three kids who were constantly missing their father. Being in a military family comes with sacrifice and stresses that are not always experienced by civilian families. Gratitude journaling became a way for her to decompress and focus on positive things in her life. When she offered me that journal, she was hoping that I would find the same comfort that she found in journaling. During this experiment, I discovered there were actually tangible benefits to journaling, and to my surprise, I enjoyed completing the daily prompts. I felt more relaxed after completing a journal, and while I don’t think I will be writing daily, I will definitely be writing more going forward.