Reasons To Keep A Gratitude Journal, Even In Quarantine
A tiny list.
Keep a gratitude journal, even in quarantine.
Maybe you’re doing it already — and if so, I applaud you. I’m cheering you on from afar, and I think it’s beautiful that you’re doing that.
Maybe you’re a skeptic.
Perhaps, while reading this, your eyes glazed over a little bit. Or maybe you strained an eye muscle from rolling them so hard. Perhaps you think that a gratitude journal or journaling is cheesy. Or pointless. Or silly or even stupid.
Perhaps you think it’s absurd to keep a gratitude journal when there is a global pandemic, and people are dying, and others are losing their jobs. Everything feels out of control, like some horrible dystopian novel that’s now our reality — what’s there to be grateful for?
But if you cannot find gratitude in the hard times — how can you possibly find it in the good?
If you were ever going to start a gratitude journal, now would be the time to start. Now, when worry is as thick as a winter sweater, and uncertainty hangs in the air alongside pollen.
When you keep a gratitude journal, several things happen.
Here are six:
- You become grounded. Putting pen to paper, it grounds you. Your thoughts are there, staring back at you in black or blue or some other colored ink. There is no backspace, no delete button — no swift erasing of your thoughts. There they stand — and from there, you begin.
- When you look for joy — you find it. It’s there, in little moments and it’s in the big ones. Tiny victories keep you moving forward from one moment to the next.
- You realize what matters. When you can say that you’re grateful for a roof over your head and clothes on your back and food in your belly — you don’t sweat the small stuff as easily.
- You shift your energy. When you can name the things you are grateful for now, you open yourself up to having gratitude for what will eventually come.
- Perhaps Oprah can explain it better, “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”
- Gratitude changes your mindset — instead of scarcity, you see growth. Instead of being “without,” you know what you do indeed hold.
