How to Deepen Your Gratitude Journal Practice for Better Wellbeing
The benefits of writing gratitude lists have been well known for years.
It improves mental health, boosts the immune system, and one study even suggested it can reduce the risk of heart failure.
For years, I’ve kept a daily list of things I’m grateful for in a designated gratitude journal. On a good day, I’d fill a whole page. When I was short on time, I’d at least jot down 3 things.
Image by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash
The Power of Descriptors in Your Gratitude List
A few years back, a therapist suggested I could take this practice even further by writing three “grats” and then journaling for half a page about an experience I was grateful for, giving myself free reign to use descriptive detail.
See, with journaling for health, there’s a direct correlation between the words you write on the page and the effect they have on your system.
It’s one thing to write, “I’m grateful for my cat.” It goes much deeper to write,
“Today, Twitters must have sensed that I was having heart palpitations. While I was lying in my recliner, trying to calm my breathing, he jumped on my lap as usual. But then he looked up at me and climbed up onto my chest and laid down right over my heart and started purring. He was so warm, his soft fur brushing against my face. The weight of him on my chest immediately calmed me and my heart rate went down. I’m so grateful to have this intuitive, compassionate creature in my life.”
Recreating the experience you’re grateful for—describing the what, where, and when—gives your psyche a portal into reliving that experience. And, according to the neuroscientific effects of gratitude, you get a second dose of serotonin and dopamine all over again.
You even appreciate it more the second time because you consciously know the positive outcome of the experience.
But then there’s the question of time again. Maybe you know the old saying,
“You should meditate twenty minutes a day... unless you’re too busy, then you should sit for an hour.”
I absolutely believe that to be true, and I also am quite imperfect at following it.
It’s easy to say that you need to find time to journal half a page on one of your grats each day. It’s harder to actually find the time and stick to it.
So, I started experimenting with a new, fun way to deepen my daily gratitude list.
Gratitude Journal Mind Mapping
When I’m short on time, rather than just jotting down three grats, I choose one grat and create a map of WHYs.
I start in the middle of a blank page in my gratitude journal with the person or thing I’m grateful for. Then I start surrounding it with reasons why I’m grateful for it.
I even draw bubbles around each reason and connect them to the central grat in a sort of mind map of gratitude.
The visual and visceral creative experience is a quick and easy way to shift my perspective and my mood, and it’s fun!
Give it a try yourself and let me know in the comments how it goes.
And if you’re in the states, Happy Thanksgiving!