This practice has become a daily habit for me for the past 5 years. It has improved my mindset and helped build intention for living a beautiful and passionate life. The best part is that it only takes about 10 minutes per day!

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Being thankful. Counting your blessings. Call it what you want, but I go for gratitude. A few years ago when I was listening to a podcast, this practice was introduced to me as a healthy habit to add into my routine as a way to improve quality of life.

It may not seem like an obvious choice for improving your quality of life. I mean, it’s definitely more subtle than drinking more water or doing a 20-minute workout every day. But health isn’t always just about your body. It’s also about your mind.

Gratitude is an excellent way to improve your mindset and it is an almost instant mood booster. The more your practice gratitude, the easier it becomes, and the easier it is to spot good things happening for you.

One of the reasons I love doing this every day is because it gets me thinking about abundance. I believe that life happens for us. It’s too easy in the world we live in to get into a lack mindset and become a victim of life happening to you, if you let it. Lack mindset is simply focusing on what you don’t have or what isn’t going “right” in your life. And it very often goes hand in hand with playing the role of victim. “Poor me. I can’t believe this is happening to me. It’s so-and-so’s fault that this happened to me. I don’t trust anyone. I can’t, because ABC.” While, really, the issue is that your mind is focused on the wrong stuff.

In other words, if you are focusing too much on all the things going wrong in your life, all you’re going to see is how unfair your life is and how much everything sucks. Where focus goes, energy flows. And this is why I love a gratitude practice.

Practicing gratitude keeps you in the mindset of what’s going right even if the ish is hitting the fan. It’s a way of pulling you out of your own muddy puddle and forcing you to see the beauty happening.

My gratitude practice is real simple and light. I look for things that have happened in the last 24 hours that made me smile or laugh, brought me joy, or make me feel really lucky to have experienced or witnessed.

These are not enormous, huge, heavy things very often. Most of the time they are very simple and light. “Tried a new iced coffee and LOVED it.” “Started reading a new book I’ve been excited to dive into.” “Experienced a beautiful sunrise on my morning walk that filled the sky with oranges and yellows.” “Found $10 in my coat pocket from last winter.” “Sang songs at the top of my lungs with my toddler.” “Sent flowers to a sick friend.” “Received a compliment on my sweater.” “Snuggled with my cat.”

None of these things are profound or life changing, really. They’re simply things that happen in my daily life that I noticed make me feel good. It can be a fleeting moment, or something that made my entire day. But the point is not how huge or amazing something is that happens to you (because honestly, how defeating would that be trying to make that kind of magic happen every single day?). The point is seeing the joy in the life you are currently living.

Before you come at me for “toxic positivity,” I want to illustrate an important point here. I am not saying that gratitude makes you happy 24/7 or makes all the unfortunate things happening in your life go away. People are dealing with serious stuff every single day and I acknowledge that. What I do refuse to do is accept an invitation to a pity party.

I also refuse to believe that there isn’t something good in every single day, no matter how small. I have done this every day for five years and never once have I not been able to find at least five things to write down. Some days are tougher than others, of course. But I always find my five.

I prefer to start my day with gratitude because then I can carry the happy with me all day long AND it reminds me to keep looking for other things to be grateful for that I can write down tomorrow. You could also do it before bed and end your day on a good note. Whichever you choose is totally up to you and neither one is wrong or right.

So here it is, step by step, how to do a gratitude practice:

Find a notebook. It doesn’t have to be anything special. Just any notebook you have lying around that you aren’t using for anything in particular. Have an old spiral bound one that your kid abandoned using after the first week of social studies? Great. You were saving that for a reason, and now you have a reason to use it.

If you’re really organized and want to have a specific notebook just for this, then add a pretty new one to your drive-up order at Target this week and that can be your gratitude notebook.

Maybe you really don’t want to have another notebook laying around dedicated to yet another thing. That’s fine too. Add this practice to a notebook you already use regularly, like with your to-do’s or something you pick up daily.

It really doesn’t matter. Just find a notebook you can use for this every single day.

At the top of the page every day, I write down the day and date (i.e., Saturday, December 28th), anything specific about the day (i.e., if it’s a holiday or a major event is occurring/occurred), and then the heading: Today I am grateful for…

Then I number the lines below it 1-5. Every day I commit to writing down five things I am grateful for that have happened in the past 24 hours.

Now think about the past 24 hours. Where did you go? What did you do? Who did you spend time with? What brought you joy? What made you smile or laugh? What did you notice that was significant to you in any way? Did anything out of the ordinary happen? When did you feel happy? Of those things, what are you glad you got to experience?

Of all the things you just thought about, write down five things that you feel grateful for that happened for you. I find the more specific I am, the better I can recall how it made me feel. For example, don’t just write down “got a coffee.” Write down, “Ordered a new coffee drink called ‘Caramel Cream Iced Latte’ based on the suggestion of the barista and it was amazing!”

Now is your chance to re-experience that and remember how truly awesome it was. How much joy it brought you! How friendly the barista was, and the two of you chatted about your love for dogs and wishing it was summer so you could be enjoying this iced goodness in the sunshine instead of the snow. It wasn’t just a plain ol’ coffee. This latte was life giving and the best treat you’ve had in months made by one hecka cool barista. Acknowledge that and write it down that way.

Here’s an example of what a normal daily gratitude practice looks like for me. You can see that my toddler has already “decorated” the page with some color, illustrating my point that this can be literally any notebook you have and does not have to be new or expensive or special (unless you want it to be).

You can see there’s nothing truly major listed here. Simple things that happened throughout my day that made me happy, brought me joy, and reminded me of the greatness in the life I am living. The best part about gratitude is that the more you practice this simple daily act, the easier it becomes, and the more you start to notice just how many great things are happening for you.

Now that you’ve got the hang of it and done it once, do it again. And again. And again. Every single day. Even on the weekends. Make this your new daily habit. Do it while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee or your evening tea. But don’t stop. Don’t just do it when something big happens either. Do it every day because the more you look for things to be grateful for, the more you’ll find.

It might take you a few days or weeks to not feel like you’re fumbling your way through it or reaching for things to get to five. This is totally normal, and not every day will come easily. Some days are harder than others and you really will have to think hard about what to be grateful for. But, as I said before, I have never not come up with five things each day in the five years I’ve done this practice.

Pretty soon this will be second nature to you and you’ll find yourself experiencing things throughout your day that will make you think, “THAT is going in my gratitude list tomorrow.” Or you’ll take a quick second to acknowledge it and think, “I am so grateful I got to experience that.”

I truly can’t wait for you to get started on this habit. It really is life changing and life giving. If you are someone who likes to make a New Year’s Resolution, I highly recommend making this easy daily habit your choice for this upcoming new year. It’s quick, easy to add in to your daily routine, and doesn’t cost you a monthly fee that you’ll quit using a month in but pay for the rest of the year 😉

Cheers to healthy minds and grateful hearts!