Creating a Gratitude Practice

“Gratitude is the single most important ingredient to living a successful and fulfilled life.” ~ Jack Canfield

Call it what you want — thankfulness, blessings, appreciation or gratitude — it’s about being aware of and acknowledging the good in our lives. By creating a daily practice focusing on what we are grateful for, we create new habits of positive thinking; we actually re-wire our brain. Gratitude puts things in a healthy perspective.

After personally experiencing the life changing effects of gratitude, Oprah Winfrey introduced the idea of gratitude journals to her television audience in the late 1990’s. The practice is simple: every day write down five things that you are grateful for. Gratitude journaling works because it slowly changes the way we view situations by changing what we focus on. From fresh flowers to the kindness of a stranger, to the warmth of our beds or the taste of a crisp apple … once we get accustomed to thinking a new way, it’s easy to think of things. Being aware of different things each day helps to deepen the practice of gratitude.

Robert Emmons, a psychologist at UC Davis is an eminent scientific researcher on gratitude. His studies show that after only three weeks of keeping a gratitude journal, participants exhibit positive responses. The reported benefits include: stronger immune systems, lower blood pressure, reduced aches and pains, better sleep and the desire to take better care of one’s physical health to feeling more optimism, joy and energy to being more compassionate, forgiving and outgoing.

Creating momentum when starting any new habit may be challenging, so here are some ideas to inspire your formal gratitude practice.

· Set an alarm on your phone and carve out ten minutes at the same time every day.

· Buy a special journal and a favorite pen to make journaling fun

· Instead of a journal, use an attractive jar to hold slips of paper with all of the things that you are grateful for.

· Rather than sitting down to write all five things at once, keep your journal or jar with tags handy and simply commit to five things a day, at any time of day.

However you practice gratitude, it is best to do it every day in order to experience life-changing effects. It is rewarding and fun to look back and read the slips of paper in your jar or the entries in your journal. You will witness the unfolding of your own personal changes.