The Amazing Power of Keeping A Gratitude Journal

You will be amazed at how helpful it can be to keep a gratitude journal. It is especially powerful when you are in a crisis, experiencing especially troubling times, or going through big changes in your life.

Oprah has kept a gratitude journal for years, and strongly recommends it!

While each of us goes through times of trouble and turmoil in our life that we cannot change or control, we can control our emotions and our thoughts. By looking for the good in each and every day, (no matter what else is going on), it gives us the strength to go on.

Choose a journal that you will enjoy writing in (I like one with a beautiful cover and lined pages), and a pen that you like.  Perhaps keep it in your night stand and plan to list at least 10 things that you were grateful for that day in your journal each night before you go to sleep. You will probably find that it is easier to quiet your mind and fall asleep faster when you have ended your day on a positive note.

When times are especially tough, you might list the simplest of things that you were grateful for that day.

For example, when my husband was dying of cancer some of my entries were things like:

          I am grateful he was not in pain today, or he got to experience the love and caring of family and friends, that he was able to be at home with his family around him, he enjoyed a TV or that he slept well.

For myself, I was grateful for a warm sunny day, a comfy bed to climb into, calls from my kids, dinner brought over by a friend,  or seeing beautiful flowering trees and plants on the way home from the supermarket.

Try this for a couple of weeks, and you will be amazed at how you will begin to notice things to be grateful for more easily, no matter what else is going on in your life.