Gratitude Journal (9th cool activity from a MOOC I'm taking) HAH! Kinda already been doing this, ;)

Happiness Practice #9: Gratitude Journal

Background

This exercise asks you to write down things for which you are grateful. Research suggests that people who feel gratitude for the good things in their life—large and small—enjoy better health and greater happiness. Most of us routinely take these positive things for granted, but studies show that consciously focusing on them can foster an attitude of gratitude in just a few weeks. 

Time required

10 to 15 minutes per day for at least one week. Studies suggest that writing in a gratitude journal one to three times per week might actually have a greater impact on our happiness than journaling every day.

InstructionsTo facilitate keeping your gratitude journal, we suggest that you perform this practice on Thnx4.org, the online, shareable gratitude journal platform created by the Greater Good Science Center. While Thnx4 can be used in research studies, your entries will not be part of any study, of course, so you can disregard all prompts on the platform concerning research.

Regardless of whether you choose to use Thnx4, here are some general instructions for keeping a gratitude journal.

Write down up to five things for which you feel grateful. The physical record is important—don’t just do this exercise in your head. The things you list can be relatively small in importance (“The tasty sandwich I had for lunch today.”) or relatively large (“My sister gave birth to a healthy baby boy.”). The goal of the exercise is to remember a good event, experience, person, or thing in your life—then enjoy the good emotions that come with it.

As you write, here are nine important tips: 

1. Be as specific as possible—specificity is key to fostering gratitude. “I’m grateful that my co-workers brought me soup when I was sick on Tuesday” will be more effective than “I’m grateful for my co-workers.”
2. Go for depth over breadth. Elaborating in detail about a particular person or thing for which you’re grateful carries more benefits than a superficial list of many things.
3. Get personal. Focusing on people to whom you are grateful has more of an impact than focusing on things for which you are grateful.
4. Try subtraction, not just addition. Consider what your life would be like without certain people or things, rather than just tallying up all the good stuff. Be grateful for the negative outcomes you avoided, escaped, prevented, or turned into something positive—try not to take that good fortune for granted.
5. See good things as “gifts.” Thinking of the good things in your life as gifts guards against taking them for granted. Try to relish and savor the gifts you’ve received.
6. Savor surprises. Try to record events that were unexpected or surprising, as these tend to elicit stronger levels of gratitude.
7. Revise if you repeat. Writing about some of the same people and things is OK, but zero in on a different aspect in detail.
8. Write regularly. Whether you write every other day or once a week, commit to a regular time to journal, then honor that commitment. But…
9. Don’t overdo it. Evidence suggests writing occasionally (once or twice per week) is more beneficial than daily journaling. That might be because we adapt to positive events and can soon become numb to them—that’s why it helps to savor surprises. 

Evidence that it works

Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377-389.

Participants who kept a gratitude journal weekly for 10 weeks or daily for two weeks experienced more gratitude, positive moods, optimism about the future, and better sleep. 

Why it works

While it’s important to analyze and learn from bad events, sometimes we can think too much about what goes wrong and not enough about what goes right in our lives. A gratitude journal forces ourselves to pay attention to the good things in life we might otherwise take for granted. In that way, we start to become more attuned to the everyday sources of pleasure around us—and the emotional tone of our life can shift in profound ways. What’s more, actually writing about these events is key: Research suggests translating thoughts into concrete language makes us more aware of them, deepening their emotional impact.

For More

• Get started with the GGSC’s online shareable gratitude journal, Thnx4.org
• Gratitude Works: A 21-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity, by Robert A. Emmons, the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude
• The gratitude curriculum for kids developed by researcher Jeffrey Froh

Source

Robert Emmons, Ph.D., University of California, Davis
Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., University of California, Riverside