After talking about the benefits of gratitude journals last week, I promised I’d share my favorite online gratitude journal. Soooo, drumroll please:
Why I love it
- It is dead simple. It’s so simple, I don’t have to remember to use it. Happy Rambles sends me an email with the subject line, “What are you grateful for today?” I just reply with my answer, and away it goes, stored in my private account on their site.
- It’s a blast from the past. In addition to asking me what I’m grateful for, the email also includes a past entry and asks, “How good was this?”
- It’s consistent. Every night at 8 p.m., I know that little email will show up in my box, and it makes me take just a few minutes and think about the good things in my day.
How it works for me
You can reply in most any form — paragraphs, bullets, photos, even incoherent sentences if that’s your thing. It’s easier and less daunting for me to write three things in a simple numbered list, so that’s what I do. It usually takes anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes.
It’s okay to focus on the small things
When I started out, I thought I might run out of things to say; being grateful for friends and family every night would get boring in a hurry.
But I quickly figured out that it’s more fun to focus on the small random things that make you smile or laugh. Here are just a few examples of quirky little things from my journal:
- The yard guy who stops to pick up wind-blown trashcans
- Fall moon on a periwinkle backdrop
- Frozen strawberries
- Getting a compliment on my new sweater
- Negotiating with Time Warner
- New sidewalk from my office to Rite Aid
- Fresh, delicious, yummy-smelling bagels
- New laptop battery
Bonus idea for job seekers
Use your gratitude journal as a way to record progress in your search. Make it a goal to have one positive piece of job-search news to report each night. It doesn’t have to be big. Maybe you found a new company to research, made a new contact, had a great conversation, figured out a new way to frame your skills, or got a target company to retweet something you said.
So, what are you waiting for? Pop over to Happy Rambles and get your own journal!
