Gratitude Beyond Journaling

What would happen if we stopped hoarding our gratitude in our private journals? What stops us from activating our gratitude? This is a life changing conversation.

This experience

On July 16, 2009 my son’s father, my former husband, died unexpectedly in a
motorcycle accident. This experience, this loss, highlighted for me the many reasons to
express gratitude with urgency and with a whole heart. Despite the intense grief, fear,
sadness and many other emotions we experience when someone’s life story ends without our permission, I was incredibly grateful that I had continuously shared my gratitude with him for his presence in my life. Many of us know someone, if not you yourself, who has deep regret for not acting on the gratitude in their hearts.

The pain of a lost opportunity to express love and appreciation has completely altered the path of many people’s lives. I will venture to guess that you could easily name a dozen people that if they died tomorrow, you would feel there were many things you wished you had thanked them for. And maybe with just this nudge, just this reminder of the short human existence we have, some of you will take action. Some of you will shoot a quick text of “I love you, I appreciate all you have done for me. Thank you.”
Still, many of us won’t. Why? What stops us from expressing our gratitude for the monumental and micro-moments that have made us who we are?

What WOULD happen if we stopped hoarding our gratitude?

If you are on a journey of self-discovery and uncovering who you were born to be, finding gratitude in your daily life is one of the habits that many of us incorporate early in that path. Beginning a gratitude practice isn’t always easy. As perfectionists, we already know that it’s likely we have trauma in our life to some degree that has planted the seeds of anxiety, control and over-accommodating in our personal and professional life. And by decades of building this habit, it can be easy to look for and see the potential disasters as a practice to create a sense of safety and security for ourselves and the people we love. So looking for the scary shit, the hard stuff, the terrifying and potentially dangerous moments is kind of our jam. This can make gratitude - which is a celebration of opportunities and resources and abundance - a little challenging at first. But once you start seeing how simple it can be, and you let go of doing it “Right”, you will likely have found that it’s a pleasantry in your daily life on most days. It settles emotions, it can provide a sense of calm that may feel distant and unattainable in most of the other hours of the day.

So we level up and start writing our gratitudes either in the notes in our phone or go old school and literally write them down in journals. Listing 3-10 things you are grateful for each day is powerful and reminds of us of how fortunate we truly are and that there is hope for that thing we are unsure about or worried may not happen. But here’s the thing, after you are journaling all the things you are grateful for….what happens next? For me it felt like stale. My gratitude practice felt like it plateaued and I craved more from it.

Switching gears for a second:

Can you think of a time when someone thanked you for something you did, for being who you are or showing up the way you do? You know - that deep sincere gratitude for being the YOU that they needed and maybe didn’t even know it? Of course you remember that. Because the energy of gratitude didn’t stay in their journal, in the notes section of their phone - they chose to activate their gratitude beyond their own personal bubble. They said - this person deserves to know how much of an impact they had on me. They need to hear my love and appreciation and acknowledgment of this. And you did. And it made an impact in that moment, in that day and for YEARS after. And we know this because you can remember it now.

Gratitude is way to acknowledge someone, to recognize their impact, to celebrate and appreciate their unique contribution.
And we know that EVERY human on the planet craves to have an impact. We all crave to have meant something to someone, to have made a difference.

The truth is that we are constantly having an impact.

Every day we are co-creating micro-moments with others and sending little and big ripples into the universe and around the globe by showing up.Imagine if we all received gratitude and recognition every time we were having a positive impact on someone’s life. How much easier would it be to notice and embody our strengths? How much easier would it be to be authentically confident and follow our hearts? How much sooner would we each be fulfilling our purpose and changing the world? We are not meant to achieve or grow alone. As humans we are designed to co-create, to collaborate with one another. To reflect our truths to one another so that the falsehoods and lies from unhealed wounds fall away faster and easier.

Gratitude in action will be the game changer.