The Self-Kindness Challenge; Week Two
Welcome back! I hope you found the first week to be helpful, and I trust, a little uncomfortable. It’s worth it I promise.
If you’re feeling like going the extra mile, sometimes it’s helpful to journal about the things you discovered during your first week of self exploration. If you do this often, it can be interesting to see how far you’ve come over time. It can also be a good reminder when you have bad days, or set backs (which will absolutely happen).
Anyway… welcome to week two! I’m going to go over how to start a gratitude practice, without it feeling awkward and corny.
If you’re anything like me, the sound of “gratitude practice” makes you roll your eyes. It definitely did for me. When I first heard it, all my years of self-deprecation and cynicism couldn’t look past how basic it felt, and how privileged it felt. If you’re here too, don’t fret. A gratitude practice can be modified to best suit the person.
PSA: Sometimes it can feel like people espouse gratitude practices as the end all be all to all your problems. We can both acknowledge our privilege to be able to have a gratitude practice, while also keeping one.
For some people, gratitude can look like putting sticky notes all over their house to visually remind them. For others, it’s an internal daily checklist. Maybe you want a card to keep next to your bed, or a reminder set on your phone. Here’s the nuts and bolts of a gratitude practice, then you can figure out what best works for you in terms of execution — because it’s different for everyone.
Gratitude Practice = Consistency
Having a gratitude practice doesn’t mean all of a sudden you don’t have negative thoughts and feelings, or that you’ll miraculously be positive every waking second of the day… that would be a high bar to set on very real human behaviours.
The only stipulation for a practice is that you do it, everyday. How you go about it, is up to you. But here’s what worked for me:
Everyday, when I woke up but before I was bombarded with the onslaught of daily tasks, I went over 5 things I was grateful for in my head. I didn’t place any restrictions on myself when it came to these 5 things. They could be as small as being thankful for my new crochet hook, or as big as being thankful for my daughter.
Sometimes I forgot. Sometimes I remembered right away. The most important thing was the intention to do it was there.
What this did, was allow me to start my day with a grateful frame of mind… instead of waking up, and picking up my phone. It reminded me of how far I’ve come, and all that I do have. It gave me 5 minutes of freedom where I wasn’t thinking about money, about things to do, things to clean, life goals, anxieties, worries.
It allowed me to take one big exhale
For this weeks homework, start one of the following types of gratitude practices: (or create your own!)
When you wake up, count 5 things you’re grateful for in your head
When you go to bed, write down 5 things you’re grateful for in a journal or book
Write down gratitude on a sticky note, and attach it somewhere you find yourself often. When you see it, say or think about one or more things you’re grateful for
When you see yourself in the mirror in the morning, express gratitude for 5 parts of yourself (I do this one too)