Putting thoughts and feelings on paper is one of the best ways to calm our mental and emotional states. It provides us with clarity, balance, and serenity.
Not surprisingly, the so-called therapeutic diaries have been used for decades in clinical communities, reporting high levels of well-being, health, and self-esteem.
In this article, we are going to focus on a fascinating form of thoughtful writing called the Gratitude Journal.
Give thanks freely and without restrictions.
Give thanks to everyone like coworkers during the job of fridge repair. Experts say that 5 or 10 things for which you feel gratitude they are a good number. However, this is only an orientation. You can write as many things as you want in your gratitude journal.
You will learn about its proven benefits and you will learn to create and maintain your own gratitude journal step by step.
The Gratitude Journal
The gratitude journal is so effective and easy to incorporate into our daily lives that it has caught the attention of many scientists, researchers, and organizations.
Today science shows us that the simple act of taking a few minutes a day to write down those things for which we are grateful transforms our bodies and minds, which quickly respond to the positive changes that gratitude puts into operation.
Why does the gratitude journal work?
For more than two decades, the Greater Good Science Center at the University of Berkeley has researched gratitude in general and the benefits of the gratitude journal. They have even opened a website where you can create a Gratitude Journal to give thanks for everything you appreciate in your life.
Robert Emmons is one of the world’s leading experts in the study of gratitude, and a great advocate of the powerful benefits it provides us physically, mentally, and socially. Together with psychologist Michael McCullough of the University of Miami, Emmons has published the book The Psychology of Gratitude and participated in numerous scientific investigations.
Benefits of the gratitude journal
Those people who keep a gratitude journal report multiple benefits:
- Improved physical and mental health:
practicing gratitude reduces the risk of suffering. heart disease, improves sleep, and is a powerful antidote to stress, fear, and anxiety. In addition, it gives us a greater presence and awareness, helps us to get out of alienation and mental confusion, and favors a more open and expansive attitude.
2. Strengthening our feelings of connection, purpose, and satisfaction in personal and social relationships:
Gratitude encourages us to see the support we receive from others, which helps to strengthen our ties with other beings.
3. Greater joy, optimism, enthusiasm, determination, and energy:
by reminding ourselves that our life is surrounded by good people and good things, we stop seeing only the negative and undesirable. This, in turn, provides us with greater discernment, clarity, and understanding in dealing with the problems, concerns, and conflicts in our daily lives.
4. Increased self-awareness:
we gain a new perspective on what is important and what we really appreciate. It also increases clarity about what we no longer want in our lives, what we know to cut through (addictions, attitudes, automatic patterns, people, jobs, places …).
5. Purpose:
The studies by Emmons and McCullough also reveal that people who keep a gratitude journal increase their chances of successfully moving toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal, and health-based).