Unfortunately, Gratitude Works

Unfortunately, gratitude works.

It’s annoying, I know. But as someone with a very strong bullsh*t detector, I must admit— there’s something to it. I genuinely feel like I’m a lighter person to be around since I started doing this a few weeks ago.

My problem with a gratitude practice, however, has always been that I have to remember to do it. And most of the time, my brain feels like an iPhone with no storage left.

In the past, even when I could remember to practice gratitude, it felt like a lot of work to start or end the day with some giant list of going through everything I’m grateful for. Where do I begin? What if I forgot something? Plus I feel bad stopping without acknowledging certain things. Is it weird to spend this much time pondering the contents of a gratitude journal? Well, here I am — overthinking a gratitude journal.

However, like all things I want to create space for in my life, it starts with lowering the bar and making it stupid easy to do.

Recently, MJ brought us the idea of microjournaling, and how she uses Notion to automate the process. Brilliant — I thought. I’m going to turn my microjournal Notion template into a gratitude journal that lives at the top of my daily dashboard, right in my face. All it takes is a moment of logging it, and suddenly I have a place to log small things, and it feels easy and effortless.

What I love about the microjournal is that all the pressure is off — I can write one sentence or a whole paragraph about something, but the pressure to document is low and therefore I want to do it more.

Since I updated the microjournal to a gratitude journal, I’m catching myself pausing way more often in the day to log the small things I would have otherwise blown right past.

This also activates the Zeigarnik effect, which proposes that our brains discard non-essential information quickly in order to preserve energy for the stuff we really need to remember. To put it simply — this is why your unfinished tasks haunt you, while you immediately forget about all the things you’ve already done. This is part of the deficit orientation most of us have around productivity. Your brain doesn’t feel pressure to hang on to the information because it’s completed; so essentially, it archives the information.

The Zeigarnik effect shows up in my gratitude practice if I’m trying to keep it all in my head. I may see a gorgeous and inspiring color on a flower while I’m on a walk, but it’s “non-essential information.” I’m clocking that it’s beautiful, but quickly moving on to the next thing my brain wants to hang on to — like an obsessive, anxious thought 🙃

However, I gave myself a place to store the information, and then move on; thus retaining the feeling long enough to write this piece about it!

I’m sure you don’t need me to convince you that gratitude is worth doing. It’s enormously documented to be great for your wellbeing. I certainly didn’t need to be convinced, but I did need to make it simpler. I want to be in a regular practice of gratitude — I just had to make it easier for myself to log it. Now, it’s so fun to be able to scroll back through the weeks and look at the things I felt grateful for, because it instantly puts me in a good headspace.

👉 What to start microjournaling? Get your free Notion template here