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!