r/ZenHabits • u/-63- • Nov 05 '24
Meditation Annual gratitude practice
I've been building up to doing an annual gratitude practice, and I'm going to share the history behind it. But because it's long, I'll break this up into parts. Feel free to skip ahead.
An idea
In 2014 I was inspired to start a gratitude practice.
There were a lot of news stories at the time about how gratitude was really good for your well-being, from physical health to mental health. I recall a couple studies saying that it only took 21 or 30 days to rewire your brain. Maybe 21 to develop a new habit, but 30 for noticeable effects on MRI scans.
So naturally I wanted in.
I tried a couple different diary apps. I tried feeling grateful in my head. I considered journaling, but didn't feel ready for journaling on paper. Unfortunately, nothing stuck for more than a week or two.
I felt really discouraged and depressed. I was judging myself for my inability to stick to something and it felt really bad.
As November approached that year, I had this funny idea that it was the perfect month for a 30 day gratitude practice. The holidays were a stressful time, plus the beginning of a long, dark, winter. I thought that by doing a 30 day gratitude practice in November, it would be an ideal way to contain the goal and enhance its effects.
Funnily, I didn't do it that year. Actually, it wasn't until 2018 that I finally did my 30 day gratitude practice in November.
Discipline?
Years passed, and life happened. I really struggled to muster up the discipline to practice gratitude (or most things actually).
In hindsight, I had a lot of psychological blocks. One issue was I thought gratitude was too close to toxic positivity (of course this was before I knew the phrase toxic positivity so I couldn't quite articulate why).
I had also lived so long with my feelings invalidated, that I really wanted to indulge in my negative thoughts for a while. I was in therapy during this period, and that felt like effective betterment for me. I kind of thought I didn't "need" gratitude? In hindsight, I was really fighting the idea of doing it.
Once I'd realized and worked through some of the psychological blocks, all I was left with was a lack of discipline. It wasn't something I was taught growing up. Increasingly, it seemed like I was going to have to exert a lot of effort to become good at it now.
In 2018 I made it a mission of mine to become disciplined. I knew it was holding me back in many areas of my life, so I worked on a plan to grow that trait within me.
Luckily it worked! I became disciplined over the course of that year, using daily creative writing. This growth helped me immensely because it proved to me that I could be disciplined, and it paved the way for other good habits.
Year 1
In November, 2018, my discipline practice paid off. I had completed an entire novel, and even created a first draft of a gratitude journal. (This journal had quotes + prompts -- things I imagined would inspire me to write).
I printed the pages of this gratitude journal, folded it up (although it looked ridiculous) and made a concerted effort to fill it out that November.
Well, I did the 30 days of gratitude in that journal that year. Even when I felt depressed or resistant, I really forced myself to do it.
But at the end of the 30 days I wasn't happy about it. Maybe I was too down on myself for some of the content I used. Maybe the printed journal was kinda dingy. Or maybe the biggest reason, I felt alone doing it.
What I really realized that first year, was how much easier it was to do anything that others were doing. I looked around me: a family gathering, a national holiday. It was evident that groups were needed, and it wasn't just about accountability. There's a sort of widespread energy that's felt when many people partake in something.
So I developed this idea in my head, that one day I wanted to see the rise of a holiday about gratitude. Something more substantive than Thanksgiving. Something that really impacts people for the better in a big way.
An idea evolving
As time went on, I really wanted to do the 30 days of gratitude. It felt like a calling (or taunting at times). In November 2019, I didn't practice gratitude. I was "busy", feeling down, but also I became fixated on improving the journal I created so that I would want to do it again.
I created a second draft of the gratitude journal, and then a third, then a fourth. Once I'd gotten to a 10th version in early 2020, I decided it was time to figure out how to print it.
There's a large portion of this story that revolves around my business aspirations. I wanted to create a business where I could make guided journals for dozens of different things -- gratitude being just one of them. But I'm going to skip over that. It's not really key to this story.
What was really strange about November 2020 and November 2021, was I couldn't bring myself to journal. I think I was hoping to in 2020, but between COVID and my mom's cancer diagnosis, I didn't feel like it.
Instead, I kept thinking that I needed a final product. Something I felt good to hold in my hands, and then I would journal. Something that was good enough...
November 2022 - November 2023 (A year of gratitude)
My mom died in June, 2022. It was hard. Afterwards I immersed myself in work, and tried to keep living because I didn't know what else to do.
But as the year end was approaching, I felt burnout. I really hadn't addressed my grief, and as my emotions started to come out, I really took a hard look at what I was doing and wondered if it was what I wanted to be doing. I thought, if I were on my death bed this time next year, would I feel proud of the life I led, or would I feel regret?
So I quit my job and started journaling. After all, how was I going to sell journals one day if I didn't journal?
At first, I journaled only digitally. I still couldn't bring myself to sit in front of a notebook and write. In hindsight, I think it made me feel too vulnerable.
But every day, diligently on a note file on my phone, I wrote what I was grateful for. I started this practice at the very end of October, 2022 and continued until the end of 2023. Over 400 days of gratitude! Take that discipline problem!
Feeling grateful every day wasn't as easy as it might sound. I had to muster up some creativity and positivity too even though it never came naturally to me. I felt sad too. I found myself feeling a lot of regret over all the gratitude I didn't feel in my life. I didn't cherish the time I had with my parents while they were alive, and I soon realized I needed to try hard to appreciate everyone around me while I still had them.
In November 2022, I started my subreddit for 30 days of gratitude. Connection was increasingly vital for me. I wanted company in journaling, even though I wasn't sure when I'd have it. And I really wanted to spread the joy that I knew in my heart gratitude would bring.
An interesting finding for me was that I did not feel incredibly uplifted after one month of journaling. Not even after two. No, it took me over 8 months before I felt a slight shift in my mood and an increased capacity for gratitude. This was mind blowing! I always thought there was something wrong that I couldn't become disciplined easily or pick up a new habit. Instead I discovered that it just takes my brain longer than most people to adapt to something new.
Gratitude November
It's November 5th, 2024 as I write this. And I'm happy that it's the third year I'm practicing daily gratitude for the month of November.
I like to think of this as a holiday. As I grew older, I didn't like holidays. I think they felt too commercial and impersonal to me. But this gratitude holiday feels really special because it's meant to nourish, not drain you. Maybe a lot like how a holiday meal nourishes a family. But 30 days of gratitude can nourish your soul.
Over at r/gratitudefor30days I post a quote and writing prompt daily. There are quite a few people there, but it's a little quiet. I invite people to join along either in the comments or in their own personal journal. I can't quite tell how it's going for anyone but me, but I do appreciate every subscriber.
I imagine that a lot of people might feel the way I used to: Here's a great thing to do! But I don't think I can commit to doing it this time. That's okay! Adoption takes a long time. I mean, it took me almost 30 years from the first time I wrote in my diary, to keeping a diary again in a meaningful way.
Life is short, and the more I think about it, the more I want to live a meaningful and fulfilling life. For me that means connection and bonding over shared values.
Maybe I'm selfish for sharing this. I did want to share how I developed a cool habit that's made a meaningful impact in my life. But also, I would love to recruit you to be grateful with me.
2
2
u/mcinyp Nov 06 '24
This sounds amazing, but I recognize myself in a lot of the old you: the discipline struggles, the psychological blocks... How did you train your discipline? What's this "discipline practice" you speak of? I would love to learn more.