Gratitude is something that I’ve tried to make a constant practice in my life, but always have trouble being consistent with. I’ve done listing 3 things I’m grateful for before bed. I’ve done listing 3 good things that happened that day. I’ve bought countless guided gratitude journals (that are all about half-filled out sitting in my nightstand drawer). I’ll stick with the practice for a while, and then something will come up and I’ll fall out of the habit.
That being said, consistent or not, it really is a very helpful tool for me. I’m very guilty of getting stuck in the mental loop of focusing only on what went wrong or is going wrong in my life, especially when challenges start stacking up. Gratitude practice helps shift the focus away from what we don’t have to what we do have. Sometimes, even in the worst of situations, we can find something to be grateful for (key word is sometimes).
One specific gratitude exercise that was suggested to me recently is called the A to Z gratitude list. You literally write (or type) the letters A to Z out and you fill in whatever words you can think of that start with each letter. X, Y and Z can be real challenging, so I don’t get too hung up if I can’t fill in every single letter. I just fill in what I can.
Here’s my A to Z gratitude list for today:
Air in my tires
Blankets
Candles
Dogs
E
Friday nights
Girlfriends
Helping out at home
Introspection
Jokes
K
Long weekends
Massages
Neighbors
O
Pushing through fear
Quiet
Reading
Sleeping in
Tea
U
V
Writing
X
You all 😊
Zoom
Hope maybe this might be a useful tool for your too in cultivating some gratitude ❤️
Great idea. I love your list and thank you for the reminder 🫶🏽
Oh I love this! Not heard of the a-z before, I’ll give that a try. And love that you’ve given yourself permission to leave blanks and drop perfectionism to play around with as a practice.
I do think it’s great for us to dip and out of practices and not be perfect at them all of the time or even a lot of the time. Do what we can when we can sort of thing. And let’s really celebrate that!