The Daily Gratitude Exercise

The human brain naturally focus on what is wrong, what needs to be fixed. This practice consists in intentionally acknowledging the good things, no matter how small.

Psychological research and our own experience can attest the fact that our train of thought tends to drift towards the negative, what needs to be done or changed, inducing anxiety and lessening one's well-being.

To counteract this natural tendency, a daily exercise is proposed: Once you wake up, remember and write down three positive things that happened in the last 24 hours that you are grateful for.

Take a minute to visualize each of the things you are grateful for, letting yourself be counsicous about the feelings and gratitude you feel towards them.

It does not matter how small these events were, it only matters that they were positive. The goal of this practice is to acknowledge the good things that would usually be taken for granted.

Resources

• Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. by Wood, Froh, Geragthy, published on Clinical Psychology Review in November, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.005.
• Gratitude and Happiness: Development of a Measure of Gratitude, and Relationships with Subjective Well-Being, by Watkins, Woodward, Stone, Kolts, published on Social Behavior and Personality in 2003. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2003.31.5.431