Developing a gratitude habit

16 January 2013

I’m a glass-half-full person. I tend to see the bright side of things. That sunny point of view has been enhanced and amplified by a gratitude habit I’ve had the privilege of developing over the past two years.

At the end of each weekday, my friend and colleague Aby Garvey and I email each other with the status of our email inboxes. (I always try to get mine down to zero and Aby, who is much more popular than I am and therefore gets tons of email, tries to get hers to 15 or below.) We also list at least five things we’re grateful for that day.

This practice allows me to turn any negative events of the day on their head while I look for the aspect of the event I can be grateful for. It also helps me notice and be grateful for the small pleasures in everyday life.

For me, an email exchange is ideal — and Aby’s the perfect partner. We’d been emailing one another for a year about our email before we added the gratitude portion. But there are many other ways to develop a gratitude habit.

Keep a gratitude journal (something I started doing, with somewhat limited success, after reading Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy back in the ’90s.
Create a gratitude jar in which you add a slip of paper each day with something you’re grateful for. At the end of the year, dump out the paper and enjoy reading a year’s worth of gratitude.
Go around the dinner table each day and have each family member say aloud something they’re grateful for
Post your gratitude on your Facebook page or tweet it

There is so much in my life to be grateful for and I am so happy to have a daily practice of noticing those things. I encourage you to give it a try!

Tagged with: aby garvey, gratitude