Gratitude Diary - easy!

It’s joyful, it’s free, and it takes only a couple of minutes each day.

A gratitude diary is my kind of personal success activity! Once you start, you'll find it becomes easy to be grateful for everything, and wonderful things will start to happen in your life.

happiness and contentment are just 2 of the by-products.

Contentment

How many moments of contentment do you allow yourself to experience in a day?

Like most emotional states, contentment is created by our thoughts, most of which are life-long habits. The more we focus on a particular state of being, the more of it we create for ourselves.

If we habitually focus on resentment, envy, a sense of lack or other painful states, they tend to increase, like a well-worn rut in the road. If we focus, instead on more positive states like contentment or hope, they tend, likewise, to increase.

A gratitude diary does exactly this - keeps you focussed on the positive aspects of the life around you and within you. Looking for the good in everything becomes a habit.

'How To Get Happy' is the most popular university course at Harvard

March 22, 2006 · At Harvard University this semester, students are flocking to a new class that might give them some insight into the secret to happiness. Psychology 1504, or "Positive Psychology," has become the most popular course on campus.

Twice a week, some 900 students attend Tal Ben-Shahar's class on what he calls "how to get happy." He achieved personal happiness by taking himself off the tenure track -- because not having to publish makes him happy. His class offers research from the relatively new field of positive psychology, which focuses on what makes people happy, rather than just their pathologies.

He looks at what’s going right. Every evening since September 19 1999, religiously, Ben-Shahar has made a list in a notebook of five things for which he feels grateful (”it could be that fantastic sandwich I had, or it could be my family”), and keeping a gratitude diary is now part of the homework for the Harvard course.

Article to read more about this

Results after only 6 weeks!

These are the results I've had since I started starting up my Gratitude Diary again, on July 8th, 6 weeks ago :

My long term (5 years) on-again, off-again partner asked me to marry him, I said yes, and he has since moved in with me. I'm grateful!!

I received some unexpected funds into my account, with access to more. Whooppeee!!

I am attending my son's graduation in Adelaide next week, all expenses paid. Hooray!

I was invited to contribute my SEO Tutorial to SEO Giveaway, and have quadrupled the number of subscribers to my newsletter, in only 6 days. Whooohooo!

I was offered 5 free tickets to a live show, and took some friends with me - wonderful!

I found a buyer for all my duplicate furniture and appliances - a young couple setting up house for the first time (bless them!) who bought the lot in one go. This saved me weeks of selling everything piece by piece. Fantastic!

I have been invited to join an international Joint Venture group. 7 of us will be setting up a website to help people make money online. Awesome!

All that in only 6 weeks!! If you haven't already, I urge you to start a Gratitude Diary and get your life back on track - look at all the good things waiting for you!

Click on the July archives, Sunday July 09.
Read "How a Gratitude Diary Works", for instructions/suggestions on how to start your own Gratitude Diary.

Remember the less fortunate

Even with car payments and other bills weighing you down, it's always easy to find gratitude for what you do have by thinking of -- and giving to -- those with much, much less.

And it's always a great time to write a check, even a teeny one, to a favorite charity (or even encourage the kids to donate their pennies).

Express Gratitude whenever possible

Express gratitude, whenever and wherever possible.

We too often take our lives for granted. Learn to appreciate and savour the wonderful things in life, from people to food, from nature to a smile.

And it's infectious! Others will start doing it too.

Think "Thanks."

"I spend a few minutes each day sitting in my study -- my favorite room -- and gazing into the backyard, which is gorgeous in any season, but I especially love it when the snow makes the streets look like they're covered with meringue and sprinkled with sugar," says Amy, 38, of Lexington, Massachusetts. "It grounds me and gives me a chance to reflect each day, and it reminds me how lucky I am to have a home and a yard like this."

Remember when you start a Gratitude Diary, that you will experience a shift in your attitude, to a very positive one. You will be thankful for everything in your life, and will stop taking things for granted. A wonderful state to be in, I think!

Find the Positive

Find the positive -- in any situation. Ask yourself, "What's right about this?"

When the relatives are being impossible, notice your niece's adorable dress. When slaving over a hot stove, remember when you had a blackout and couldn't cook at all. When the electricity bill comes in, be grateful for the heating/cooling it gave you. When you pick up the latest virus going round, be thankful you can have a couple of days in bed! (Visit www.juice-detox.com to find out how to stop getting sick).

You get the drift. Finding the positive in any situation changes your attitude, lightens up your life, and attracts more good things to you. Remember to record them all in your gratitude diary!

Appreciate Yourself

Your gratitude diary should not just be about others - include yourself in it!

Appreciate yourself as well, and acknowledge your successes.

Keep a diary not just of what you did, but what you did well, and what you appreciate about yourself and others. "I sometimes write lists of how I was successful that day," says Karen, 37, of Westborough, Massachusetts, who writes in her journal when her family is asleep. "Really basic stuff, like 'turned TV off and played hide-and-seek with kids.' It forces me to acknowledge, when I can be so hard on myself or focus on what I should be doing, that I'm really doing all right."

How a Gratitude Diary Works

Here's how a Gratitude Diary works :

1. Every day, write down 5 things you are grateful for. It can be anything - feeling the sunshine on your face, happy that a friend phoned, receiving a present, being able to take a walk, anything. Work out a time to do this. Ideally, around the same time every day works best.

2. Make a commitment to yourself that you will write down 5 things every day - this is very important.

3. The 5 things MUST be DIFFERENT each time. Never repeat anything. NEVER REPEAT ANYTHING!

5. Smile as you write them down. This will help you to feel grateful.

6. You can write a lot about each thing, get really detailed, write why you are grateful for it. Or if you don't have time, just write one line.

Here's what will happen :

The first day you'll be thinking hard about what you're grateful for. You will find them, though.

The second day, knowing you must find 5 new things to write down, you'll start to look for things to be grateful for. As the days go by, you'll experience a shift in your attitude. You'll begin to expect things to happen to be grateful for.

As more days pass, there will be another shift. You'll start to recognize when things happen to be grateful for.

Another shift will take place when you start to feel grateful at the time the event takes place. This is when the miracle of gratitude will really start happening for you.

From experience, I would say that this process will take about one month. Keep it going for at least this length of time and you will see changes start to happen in your life.

Don't stop the gratitude diary at this point, no matter how good things are going. Never stop!

Seen this?

I AM GRATEFUL:

FOR THE WIFE WHO SAYS IT'S HOT DOGS TONIGHT, BECAUSE SHE IS HOME WITH ME, AND NOT OUT WITH SOMEONE ELSE.

FOR THE HUSBAND WHO IS ON THE SOFA BEING A COUCH POTATO, BECAUSE HE IS HOME WITH ME AND NOT OUT AT THE BARS.

FOR THE TEENAGER WHO IS COMPLAINING ABOUT DOING DISHES BECAUSE IT MEANS SHE IS AT HOME, NOT ON THE STREETS.

FOR THE TAXES I PAY BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM EMPLOYED.

FOR THE MESS TO CLEAN AFTER A PARTY BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE BEEN SURROUNDED BY FRIENDS.

FOR THE CLOTHES THAT FIT A LITTLE TOO SNUG BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE ENOUGH TO EAT.

FOR MY SHADOW THAT WATCHES ME WORK BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM OUT IN THE SUNSHINE.

FOR A LAWN THAT NEEDS MOWING, WINDOWS THAT NEED CLEANING, AND GUTTERS THAT NEED FIXING BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE A HOME.

FOR ALL THE COMPLAINING I HEAR ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT BECAUSE IT MEANS WE HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

FOR THE PARKING SPOT I FIND AT THE FAR END OF THE PARKING LOT BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM CAPABLE OF WALKING AND I HAVE BEEN BLESSED WITH TRANSPORTATION.

FOR MY HUGE HEATING BILL BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM WARM.

FOR THE LADY BEHIND ME IN CHURCH WHO SINGS OFF KEY BECAUSE IT MEANS I CAN HEAR.

FOR THE PILE OF LAUNDRY AND IRONING BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE CLOTHES TO WEAR.

FOR WEARINESS AND ACHING MUSCLE AT THE END OF THE DAY BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE BEEN CAPABLE OF WORKING HARD.

FOR THE ALARM THAT GOES OFF IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM ALIVE.

AND FINALLY, I AM GRATEFUL FOR TOO MUCH E-MAIL BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE FRIENDS WHO ARE THINKING OF ME.