Gratitude Journal - a recommended evening routine

One of my evening routine is to write down 3 things that I feel grateful for. Typically those are about small events that happened during that day, often involving other people. I have been doing this ever since I read a book by Tal Ben-Shahar back in 2011.

Tal Ben-Shahar taught two of the largest classes in Harvard University’s history, and one of them was Positive Psychology. The number of students attending his class grew by over 100 times in 4 years. His book ‘Happier’ is the print version of what he taught in his popular class. It is also available in Japanese (ハーバードの人生を変える授業).

The author recommends that you apply one lesson per week, and make them all your habits. It will take you about a year to implement everything in the book at this pace, but some of them are very simple, like drinking enough water, walk more, etc.

Writing down 3 things that you feel grateful for each day is one of the first lessons you will read in the book. When you write them down, make sure you re-play the scene as vividly as possible in your mind, so you can experience that feeling of gratitude or happiness once again. Tal Ben-Shahar wrote that he used to do a variation of this exercise with his family at dinner table. I think that is also a nice practice, especially if you live with young children. You can ask them what good things happened to them during that day. I like writing them down each evening, so I can go to bed feeling happy. It is also nice to look back on my journal every now and then, to see what kind of things are making me happy. Many of them are just simple interactions with other people - an exchange of greeting with a stranger during an early morning stroll, an email from a friend, a phone call, etc.

I would recommend this simple yet very powerful exercise to anyone. If you can make it part of your routine, even better.

Here are a couple quotes by Oprah Winfrey who is a living example how thankfulness and gratitude can transform one’s life:

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.
Oprah Winfrey

Focusing on one thing that you are grateful for increases the energy of gratitude and rises the joy inside yourself," Winfrey said on Oprah's Life Class in 2011.