The Awesome Jar

An Active Experience of Gratitude

We all know it’s important to be grateful for what we have. It’s a very basic concept, one that we confront practically every day. Everything from desktop backgrounds to throw pillows seems to feature flowy scripts of “Thankful,” Grateful” or “#Blessed.”

But how many of us actually practice gratitude? I don’t mean just allowing grateful thoughts to flow passively through your subconscious (although the more of those, the better too!). I’m talking about an intentional, daily, pen-and-paper (or button-to-finger) ritual of spelling out the things you’re grateful for.

This does take work, of course, but really only about five minutes out of the 1,440 in your day. And it doesn’t have to be a master list of all the things in your life that you’re grateful for - making one of those definitely takes more than five minutes! For this short, daily gratitude ritual, all you have to do is write down three things you’re grateful for that day. It can be major stuff, like a fun day playing with the kids at the beach, or something insignificant, like our hall light finally getting fixed.