Our Family Gratitude Practise
I have practised Gratitude every day for years now and the positive effects it has on me are so huge that I knew I just had to share it with my children. The way they have responded to it is so wonderful, that I must share it with you too!
If you don’t know what Gratitude Practise is, it is writing down three good things every day….even on days that feel like they have been rubbish. The three things can be tiny or huge or somewhere in-between. The sky was blue, I had coffee with a friend, I had a lovely email, there was a seat on the train, I read some of my book, I had my favourite meal for dinner, I had my umbrella with me when it started raining, I watched a film, I received a lovely gift…. you get the idea! I promise you that once you start you will always find three good things and often more.
I will admit that I do not always have (make) time for writing down my three things but I know that when I do write them down the positive effect is bigger. I also love reading back on old lists. This helps me to live and benefit from it three times…the time it happened, the time I wrote it down and the time I read it. Gratitude really is so powerful and you can read more about it here and here.
When I started Gratitude Practise with my children I asked them at bedtime to tell me three good things about their day. I still regularly do this and I love how much their faces light up when I ask them, even on days when bedtime has been tricky or they haven’t been feeling on top form. After a while they started telling me their three good things without prompting, which was pure joy!
As a family I love to ask everyone on a Sunday evening, when we usually have dinner together, about their three good things about the week gone by. There is something really special about sharing it together. It feels like everyone benefits even more from hearing all the good things.
In addition to talking about our favourite things, I also encourage my children to use their Happy Self journals, particularly Oren and Rudi who are neurodiverse and often struggle with self-esteem and anxiety. They regularly come home from school feeling quite low and exhausted. Helping them to turn their feelings about their days around by writing down three good things in the journals is so powerful. I definitely want them to tell me about the tricky stuff because that is really important to acknowledge and sometimes work out solutions for but giving them a brilliant tool to life their mood is so valuable, not just for now but for life.
And finally, this year we have started a Gratitude Jar. Every time something good happens that we want to remember, we write it down and pop it in the jar. It is lovely to see the jar filling up because it helps us all to see that plenty of good things are happening. And then at the end of the year, we will tip out the jar and sit down together to read all the good things. I think this might become a new family tradition!
Gratitude Practise might feel strange at first or even a bit silly. You might think it’s not working and give it up but I really recommend giving it a try for a month and then reflecting on how you and your family feel. I find myself being grateful all the time throughout my day now, so my spirits are constantly lifted by small things. It really is a beautiful thing and I hope you give it a try and start feeling the benefits really soon. xo
