How to Move Beyond Being Grateful Into a Lifestyle of Practicing Gratitude

Moving beyond the gratitude journal

I was grumbling the other day — verbally ticking off all the things that weren’t lined up just the way I wanted them to be. My husband, an eternally patient man, had enough.

“You need to stop complaining,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I replied.

“I’m not telling you that for me,” he said, “but for your sake.”

Ah…patient and wise.

He’s right. My ingratitude and critical spirit would not serve me and would only escalate into full-blown depression or anger over the things I could not change if I let my mind fixate on them.

I come from a long line of grumblers and complainers, even an Eyore aunt that I am named after. We didn’t practice gratitude as a family. We never took turns sharing about what we were thankful for at Thanksgiving dinner.

My mom complained about the weather, the news anchors, the neighbors, you name it. My dad complained about dog hair on his socks, the lazy drivers at work, and the weather. My siblings complained that life wasn’t fair and I learned to complain too.

And criticize

To be fair, criticizing comes naturally to me. As a Virgo, Enneagram #1, Perfectionist (take your pick), I have a knack for looking at something that is 99% perfect and finding the single flaw.

It’s a gift — and a curse — okay, it’s mostly a curse but I’ve learned to harness it and use it for good.

When life is not lined up just so for me, when dominoes fall but fail to create the sequence of events I’m looking for, or when my plans don’t pan out, I get frustrated and turn to my old modus operandi; I start to see the flaw in everything and then I complain.

Let’s be clear: complaining = ingratitude.

It doesn’t take spiritual discipline or wisdom to see what’s wrong or less than ideal in a situation — any ungrateful fool can do that! It does take discipline to turn that mindset around and start seeing life through the lens of gratitude.

I’m a grateful person

If you had asked me years ago — in the heyday of my busy yet negative lifestyle — if I was a grateful person, I would not have hesitated to answer a resounding YES. I would have listed all that I had to be grateful for — a kind and considerate husband, two healthy and smart boys, a beautiful home, a well-paying job, and cute dogs.

But, if you had secretly recorded my words throughout a typical day, you would have heard the fracture between what I said and what I did. (We all have blind spots.)

I could mentally nod to gratitude and understand that I should be grateful, but I was not practicing gratitude on a daily basis. I was not living gratitude as a lifestyle, nor was I modeling it for my children.

Is gratitude a fad?

When gratitude became the thing everyone was talking about, I just rolled my eyes and resisted the talk about starting a gratitude journal.

Hocus pocus, self-help strategies — who needs ’em?

Just because Oprah says it doesn’t mean we have to do it.

I don’t need a gratitude journal to know that I have a lot to be grateful for.

I maintained this stance until one day, as I was perusing the thrift store bookshelves, the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp seemed to levitate toward me. I mean it really felt like that book inched away from the other books and whispered, Read me.

I knew enough about synchronicity and how God has always used books in my life to take me to a higher place that I should not ignore this prompting. I read One Thousand Gifts and haven’t been the same since.

Nobody writes like Ann Voskamp so I won’t try to do her message justice here, let’s just suffice it to say her words broke something in me and showed me that a mental understanding of gratitude is not the same thing as a heart understanding of gratitude.

It was time to break down my pride and begin the practice of a daily gratitude journal

I wanted to pursue gratitude until it wasn’t something I needed to remember to do at the end of the day. I wanted to breathe, think, and love gratitude in each moment. I wanted gratitude as a spiritual discipline, a lifestyle if you will.

But I had to start somewhere so I began with the recommended gratitude journal. Over time, I changed up the format so as not to get dull or rote. A spiritual discipline should not be like writing your name 100 times. It’s not a punishment — it should be a life-giving, Spirit-led activity — so keeping it fresh is important to keeping the practice alive.

In all, I’ve created a few formats for journaling about gratitude and it’s the first thing I recommend in my course for simplifying your life. When you realize how much you have you stop seeking excess. That’s a major turning point in seeking a simpler life.

“They” say practicing gratitude will change your life. And “they” are right!

Practicing gratitude changes everything

Up until recently, this has been an anecdotal conclusion. People like me and you make a commitment to consciously acknowledge the good in every situation (and yes, there is good in any situation even if we have to squint our eyes and turn our head sideways to see it) and before we know it our attitudes have shifted and we find ourselves counting every blessing, naming them one by one without even trying too hard.

This discipline blooms into joy, a changed outlook on life, a peace that carries us through each day, and, as science is starting to support: a rewired brain.

Yesterday as I walked along in between moments of what seemed like an irritating day, I found myself counting out my blessings…

Well, at least the sun is shining and the ice has melted off this sidewalk.

And look at those mountain views!

I’m getting some exercise going back and forth between these buildings.

The canceled meeting was an opportunity to relax in a coffee shop.

They have peppermint tea! My favorite.

I got to pet Simon.

And make some personal phone calls.

And then it hit me: I was practicing gratitude and I didn’t even need a journal to remind me.

Looking for a gratitude practice? Here’s one to try!

Living simply begins with a grateful heart and leads to a full life. I am indeed grateful that I’ve been given the opportunity to share my journey from stress to simplicity. If you’re ready to say yes to less and no to stress, join the community at The Decluttered Soul.