Gratitude practice - my issues with it, and my alternative: 'little joys' practice

    I’ll bet you’re familiar with the suggestion to keep a gratitude journal.  Or to list 3 things you’re grateful for each day.

    I keep seeing it recommended here and there, still.

    I tried it for several weeks, maybe it was even as much as couple of months (I can’t recall).  I really did try to persevere with it.

    And for me it just didn’t have the desired effect.  Far from being helpful, it was actually potentially harmful.

    The issue I’ve got with it was that I was ‘scratching’ around for things to list.

    So it made me feel that I didn’t have things to be grateful for.

    I do, of course.  But I felt a bit ridiculous writing down things like “Grateful I’ve got a roof over my head”.  Or “I’ve got a significant other”.

    And I felt some weird pressure not to repeat things.  So having written “grateful for my cats” one day, I felt I couldn’t repeat that same thing on another day.  Or I’d be writing the same thing each day for weeks, and what’d be the point in that?

    Also, my brain would do a thing where it’d ‘poke holes’ in its own suggestions for things to write.

    So, while I am indeed grateful I’ve got a roof over my head, another bit of my brain would throw up this sort of thing:  yeah, but it’s filled with mould and other issues & the rent is nevertheless exorbitant!

    Therefore it felt as though I wasn’t doing gratitude practice ‘properly’.  Or that this poking holes business was detracting, potentially making the entire thing more detrimental than helpful.  It was focusing my mind on the negative, rather than the positive.  The exact opposite of what it’s meant to do, I believe?

    And it wasn't that I was going through an especially difficult time when I tried this.  Nor do I feel that it’s because I’m an entirely negative person, or something.  (This is possibly an entire separate post in its own right.)  I can be ‘glass half empty’, definitely; but I can also be ‘glass half full’.

    Having to wrack my brains for something from earlier that day for which to be grateful?  It was uncomfortable, unpleasant even.  And it didn’t seem to be getting any easier as time went on.  It wasn’t a case of practice makes perfect.  Not for me.  In fact, the pressure not to repeat stuff was making it harder as time went on.

    So for me it felt right to stop.

    I’m sure it works for some folk, and is helpful.  And perhaps there’s even a different way of approaching this which might work better for me.  (Recording things as they happen or occur to me might work, if I could do it that way.  Sitting in front of a blank journal page at the end of the day and struggling to write on it does not.)

    I've said this before about goals, and I'll say it again now.  I'm not ashamed of quitting, nor feel it's a failure.  I believe it's that all our minds work differently.  And if I feel something is a chore, without anything constructive to offer me, it makes sense to stop it.  (Sadly, I do have to keep cleaning our home, so I guess I'll focus my energy there instead!)

A minor point to finish on, and a possible alternative to gratitude practice for me (and maybe for you).  This YouTuber, Hannah May, brought it to my attention in one of her series of 'resident sicko' videos (her term, not mine).  I think she calls it 'joy of the day' (timestamp: 21:20).

    I feel joy of the day is something I could really pick up and run with.  It's likely that a little something will catch my attention in a day, and strike me as a little joy.  (I don't necessarily have someone I'll message them to right now like Hannah does, but that doesn't have to deter me from mentally noting these moments.)

All photos from Unsplash

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