REGISTER FOR THE GRATITUDE CHALLENGE, FREE!
Pic by David Newkirk
The challenge is simply to write in your gratitude journal every day for two weeks. You may do whatever gratitude practice you wish, however I might suggest as your practice to simply write three things you're grateful for and choose one of those to extrapolate upon in a paragraph. That’s it!
If you miss a day, be grateful for a second chances and pick up where you left off or start over. No judgement.
I'll be sending regular emails with encouragement and fun things that I and other people are grateful for.
Thanks and please share this!
The US is celebrating Thanksgiving this week. Our family is living in France so we’ll be missing our families, but will be celebrating in our own way with a gratitude ritual and by going out to dinner. Maybe we’ll open a nice bottle of wine. We used to buy nice bottles of wine to open someday. Nowadays we realize that today is someday, and we open all the good wine!
This is the perfect week for a quick note about the science and spirituality of gratitude.
Your Brain on Gratitude
The amygdala is our brain’s stranger danger detector. The book The User Illusion, a great book about the brain and consciousness, reports that the brain takes in 400 BILLION bits of information each second. Our consciousness, all the stuff we are aware of, only produces 2000 bits of information. We are actually wired for negativity because any self-respecting organism prioritizes survival above everything else and this means noticing the negative and potentially dangerous stuff first. Looking for it even. Studies at Berkeley even suggest that for every positive bit of information, the amygdala picks up 6–9 bits of negative information, priming us to be on high alert all the time in a way that doesn’t even register in our consciousness.
So yeah, it seems we are wired to notice that the turkey was tougher than last year’s and that guy cousin Suzzy brought to dinner smells like moth balls.
But there’s hope! In the 90s there was a revolution in the world of psychology, changing from mostly using it to study all the ways humans are broken (read Freud), to using it to study all the ways that we might use it to make ourselves happier. Beyond the most obvious habit of self-monitoring your critical self-talk, two practices stand out above the crowd as powerful and lasting ways to change our psychology for long term happiness: gratitude and mindfulness.
Doctors and scientists are now saying what sages and saints have been saying for millennia: gratitude needs to be a daily practice and that doing so will change your happiness in profound ways. Gratitude can’t be that thing you do begrudgingly, once a year, strongarmed by your aunt Marge who insists that all 37 people around the Thanksgiving feast take turns rattling off lukewarm tokens of gratitude while the mashed potatoes are getting cold and a skin is forming on the gravy. No, gratitude needs to be a daily practice. And you gotta feel it for it to work. And it does. In longevity studies, gratitude is listed as one of the primary traits of people who live past 100!
How to Do a Daily Gratitude Practice
Get a notebook
Every day, first thing, write three things you’re honestly and sincerely grateful for
Choose one of those things and write a paragraph about how and why you’re grateful for that thing and try to describe as best you can how it makes you feel.
That’s it! Now make it a habit.
As you develop the habit of beginning your day with gratitude, you start to manually tilt your brain to begin to notice more of the positive things about your life and less of the negative things. As you do, you’ll begin to see yourself experience real and lasting happiness. It’s scientifically proven. Regardless of what science says, you gotta try it for yourself.
The Gratitude Challenge
So, I want to offer you a challenge: Can you do a gratitude challenge for 2 weeks straight, 14 days, pulling out your gratitude journal and listing 3 things you’re grateful for then writing a wee paragraph on one of them? Sure you can. And if you’re willing, I’d like to help.
If you like the idea and would like a little followup and accountability, click here and enter your name and email address to join my Gratitude Challenge. It’s free. All this challenge consists of is some regular emails I’ll send you to encourage you to keep going as well as some heart-felt stories about gratitude and the benefits of gratitude. I will also encourage you to send me stories or lists of things you’re grateful for. With your permission I may share your stories with the group.
If you don’t want to join this challenge, no worries. I still encourage you to begin a daily gratitude practice in your own way for you to experience this life-changing and affirming practice.
Here’s my gratitude practice for today.
I’m grateful for:
My loving family, especially my beautiful life and spirit-partner, Seneca
My wonderful, satisfying, and joyful career of teaching yoga and meditation
The opportunity to live in France
Expanded paragraph on point 1
Life is a wild ride and I am extremely grateful to Seneca for being on this ride with me. We’ve weathered some rough waters, changing businesses, moves, kids, etc. and we’ve navigated our way into some immensely beautiful and happy adventures as well. One of the things that I love the most about Seneca is that she helps me be a better man. Her support, love, and insight inspires me and pushes my best self to the forefront. I love Seneca’s spirit. I think of myself as a spiritual person, but she is a spiritual powerhouse. She is a goddess. Seneca has really ignited an adventurous spirit in me. She was the one with the wild idea to move to France and even though I’m the one who speaks French, she was willing to come to this country to have the adventure and to learn the language and do whatever necessary for our family to have this amazing experience. Seneca, I love you and I’m so grateful for you in my life.
What are you grateful for?