Back in the day, I bought a gratitude journal.
It was the height of the gratitude boom—everywhere I looked, someone was singing the praises of listing your gratitudes. So I jumped on board. Every morning, I dutifully wrote down three things I was grateful for.
Here’s what a typical list looked like for me:
I’m grateful for my wife.
I’m grateful for our dogs.
I’m grateful for my morning coffee.
At first, it felt good. But after a while, something shifted. The words lost their meaning.
Instead of lighting me up, the practice turned into a “should” and started to feel like a chore. I should feel grateful. I should write my list. I should be better at this.
And when the practice didn’t deliver the magical contentment it promised, I did what most of us do—I blamed myself. I can’t even do gratitude right. What’s wrong with me?
It turns out, there wasn’t anything wrong with me. But there was something wrong with how I was practicing gratitude.
I had turned gratitude into an intellectual exercise—cold and disconnected from my body. I was just thinking about gratitude, but I wasn’t feeling it.
Gratitude by checklist doesn’t work because thinking isn’t enough. A list of blessings might be neat and tidy, but it’s not alive. It doesn’t stir you. It doesn’t stick.
So instead of asking, “What am I grateful for?” I began asking, “What does this gratitude feel like in my body?”
I’d close my eyes and imagine each thing on my list until I could feel it—not as a concept, but as a full-body experience.
It’s not just “I’m grateful for my wife.” It’s the flutter of warmth in my chest when I see her dance around the kitchen. It’s the way my heart comes alive when her laugh, alive and unrestrained, fills the room. It’s the quiet electricity of her fingers brushing mine as we walk through a crowded street.
When I wrote, “I’m grateful for our dogs,” I wasn’t giving myself time to sink into the actual experience. Now, I close my eyes and remember Sputnik sleeping between my legs during a nap, his head resting on my ankle. That small, steady weight isn’t just comforting—it’s like being tethered to pure love.
And the coffee? It’s more than caffeine. It’s the ritual—the way the first sip sends a warm rush through my chest. It’s the earthy smell, the steam curling up from the mug, the unspoken promise of a day waiting to unfold.
This shift—from thinking to feeling—brought gratitude to life for me.
So if you’re like me and your gratitude journal feels more like a chore than a joy, stop trying to count your blessings. Start feeling them instead.
Close your eyes. Remember the feeling of someone you love laughing, or the way sunlight warms your skin on a cold day. Feel it ripple through your body.
It’s not about forcing positivity or pretending everything is perfect. It’s about letting life’s best moments leave a mark on you—real, deep, and unforgettable.
Because true gratitude doesn’t live in your journal or your head.
It lives in your body, waiting for you to embrace it fully.
P.S. Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving full of gratitude that you can feel, not just think about.
Related
Bold
