Gratitude: Keep it Simple
You Don’t Always Need a New Thing to be Grateful For
Adapted from Niklas Goke via his article on Medium.
Gratitude exercises are widely used and can have a tremendous impact on your overall health and well-being, from increased happiness, better sleep, increased energy, reduced anxiety and depression, and so on. As you can see from this article, keeping a “gratitude journal” where you regularly record things for which you’re grateful produces robust results in terms of the benefits of such a simple, yet meaningful, task. As they point out, gratitude has two primary components. First, it’s an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good things in the world, or consider gifts and benefits we’ve received. This doesn’t mean life is perfect; it doesn’t ignore complaints or burdens. But when we look at life as a whole, gratitude encourages us to identify some amount of goodness in our life. Second, it challenges us to figure out where that goodness comes from. Sometimes it leads to the recognition that the source of goodness comes from within ourselves or things that we did in which we take pride. But, it often leads us to recognize sources of gratitude outside of ourselves. That, beyond our own positive traits, we are able to acknowledge the gifts, big or small, that we receive from other people help us to achieve goodness in life.
Back to Niklas - in his essay, he demonstrates how he practices gratitude. But, he points out an important consideration. That life would happen, and he would get lazy with his gratitude journal.
Busy. I had bad days. When I felt tired, I threw three quick things together. When I was sad or unmotivated, I listed the same stuff. At first, I felt bad whenever I repeated a previous reason. I am not being as grateful as I should be. If I was more grateful, I’d find better things.
He then points out something really powerful and important…
Gratitude is not a creativity exercise, it is a gratitude exercise.
You don’t always have to have a different gratitude list each day. Sure, you might need to think harder if you are listing things without much consideration or reflection. But, often it really is the same things, over and over again, that makes us happy. If you feel like you are just covering your bases, you don’t necessarily need to feel bad - sometimes those are what matter the most to us, and we should highlight and celebrate that.
What are you grateful for? If you haven’t already, maybe a gratitude journal is just what you need to boost your health and wellness, along with your overall performance in your day-to-day endeavors.