Building a gratitude muscle

Why it is hard looking for things to be grateful for when you’re out of practice.

It can be a really rewarding thing to do. To build a daily habit of gratitude. Every day to reflect on and make a note of something you are grateful for.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

It sounds easy, but the reality is much harder. You feel massively guilty when gratitude does not skip freely and easily into your mind. Your life isn’t so bad after all. Is it? If you’re not used to looking for it, the joy in your world can be tricky to spot.

The Journalling Habit

I was new to journaling. Building a habit to journal was slippery and it took me a few iterations to figure out a format that I wasn’t resistant to. And then I read about adding daily gratitude to my journal and I thought that sounded good. That sounded like something I needed in my life. Maybe the fact that I felt I needed it was the first indication I was going to find it difficult.

Daily Gratitude

The idea is a very simple one and I would encourage you to add something similar to your day. Probably at the end of your day, as you reflect on all that has come to pass in your world since you got out of bed, you write down one thing for which you are grateful.

Except…

Some days I had nothing. Literally nothing. At first I thought I was a bit too English and a bit too allergic to religion for “Daily Gratitude”. So I changed it up, rebranded it to “Today I have loved…” and then each day I would write down something I had loved. Or tried to.

Struggle

Look, I didn’t struggle every day. Sometimes the joy was obvious. But, if I am honest, those days were rare. More often I would come to that section in my journal and… nothing,

I’m not Morrissey

I’m not a particularly glum person either. Generally I think I am quite a happy chap. I have my dark moments for sure, I can be grumpy, but I laugh easily and I will often find absurdity in the world very funny. But not sure that is the same as something to be grateful for. To love.

Too British?

I began to worry that there was something wrong with me. Had my very Britishness broken me? Was I culturally too jaded and too sarcastic to love anything? Was I depressed maybe? Was this some kind of mental illness? Had I built a life for myself that was so devoid of anything good?

No. I have a wonderful life and I don’t consider myself depressed. I have people in my life that I love with all my heart. So, what was the problem here?

Where to start

The problem was, as I sat looking at my journal, as I asked myself what I had loved that day, I didn’t know where to start. Thinking about my whole day was overwhelming and if nothing immediately leapt out at me, the guilt set in. This is, of course, the very reason to develop this practice. I didn’t know where to look and so I couldn’t see the woods because of all those pesky trees.

The Joy List

I made a list- I am a big list maker as you know if you follow my work. I made a list of the things in my life that I love, that bring me joy. I tried to capture everything. And even now, if something new occurs to me, I add it to that list. That list, The Joy List (if that doesn’t sound too much like the name of a strip club), serves as my trigger list. Each day as I write my journal, when it comes to the question of what did I love today, I can consult The Joy List and use it to prompt me. It focuses my mind on where to find gratitude.