My Journey With Gratitude

What is My Journey With Gratitude?

This is an initiative by Knit A Tale: a shared story-writing platform.

As part of our gratitude month, we wanted to not just preach, but also bring it into our lives. Gratitude has been shown to positively impact our relationships, bring in peace, joy, improves health, and helps us cope better in adversity.

As a community, we thought this would be a way to collectively bring gratitude into our lives.

How Does It Work?

Over the next month, we will in small steps find ways to weave gratitude into our lives.

To make it a part of our day-to-day lives. In any way that you’re comfortable, let us actively bring gratitude to our lives.

A journey that may seem daunting, but would be oh so rewarding. To make it a little less scary and achievable, we can take this on as a community effort, and lean on one another. So we encourage you to participate.

Here Are Some Ideas From Our End

  1. 5G (5 things that I am Grateful for Today)
    • Every day notice 5 simple things that you are grateful for. This could be anything from your headphones to your teddy bear or even your best friend! You can choose to acknowledge them at a time convenient to you.
    • For example: before you begin your day or before you go to sleep at night. You could also choose a specific object and hold on to it while you list these things, this helps you ground yourself and over time every time you hold the object you will feel grateful.
    • I tried it with our bedside plant, now every time I see it, it reminds me of all the things I cherish.
  2. Journaling
    • For the ones that like to note things down, make lists, or would like to use that fancy diary you bought but its lying blank you could try journaling.
    • You can take a few minutes each day at a time you like (keep this consistent) to note down things you are grateful for, what things helped you, how did people impact you, etc.
    • This is a nice way to keep a record of and reflect on what happens on a day-to-day basis.
    • You do not need to have a super aesthetic journal with artistic pages, a simple heartfelt note will do the trick.
  3. Gratitude Jar
    • If maintaining a journal seems tedious don’t worry we’ve got your back.
    • You could instead write things you are grateful for on a piece of paper and store them in a jar.
    • At the end of 30 days, you can read them all one by one. You would be surprised by what you read.
    • Yesterday I was grateful for a lizard in my room, cause it forced me to abandon my work and watch a movie with my grandmother.
  4. 30 Days of Thank You
    • This super cool idea is by Brian Doyle.
    • Here you find one person to say thank you to every day. People walk in and out of our lives and often we do not get the chance to say what we mean, so find a person and show how grateful you are for the role they played in your life.
    • When Brian tried it he said that we usually don’t reach out to someone specifically to thank them and when he did it they were moved beyond words.
    • Plus he realized he had so many people to thank, I guess we all do.
    • You can watch his TED Talk on YouTube as he narrates his entire experience with his project 365 Days of Thank You.
  5. Capture it with a Picture
    • Another great way to save memories. Take a picture of at least one thing every day that you are grateful for.
    • You could save it in your gallery, print it and make a collage, make a slideshow, a movie, etc.
    • When you look back on these pictures after 30 days they will bring back all the memories. You will also notice that you remember how you felt at that moment when you clicked it.
    • Once again you don’t need to be a skilled photographer/editor, the moments that these pictures capture are what matter.
  6. Practice Mindfulness
    • Whatever we do, doing it with awareness or mindfully makes that experience more enriching.
    • Whether you’re listening to a song or cooking or even organizing your books, do it with full awareness.
    • Without getting distracted, without doing something else in the background, just focusing on the one thing in front of you.
    • Doing something with intention or mindfully, makes us appreciate it all the more. It helps us realize how powerful simple actions can be.
    • Tried this out consciously while designing this post and I felt I was able to work better and felt pretty proud of my creation in the end.
  7. I’m Grateful for ME
    • Finally, Yourself.
    • You are on this journey towards gratitude and we think the most important person to thank, is oneself.
    • If you think about it, You were there for yourself always. You have survived everything that has come your way, this is thanks to you. So, acknowledge and be grateful for yourself too.
    • Give yourself a pat on your back each day, say a kind word to yourself, appreciate your efforts, write yourself a thank you letter….
    • Arva you did good today.’
    • ‘Neha you good enough.

Get Set Go!

So we’ve given you a few ideas, try them out if they resonate with you. You could use them as-is, combine them, do something entirely different it’s totally up to you. We would like you to make this your own journey.

You can comment on this post to join in this journey and tag your friends too. Do tell us in the comments the idea you will be using, we’d love to know that too and your idea might even appeal to someone else and you may inspire them to join in.

So let’s all start this journey together.

P.S: A small request from our side if you’ve followed us till here do join us in this project too.

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