Why I Quit Doing A Morning Gratitude Practice

If you struggle to feel grateful or you didn’t get on with the whole morning gratitude list thing, I wrote this post for you.

Because I was you.

Back in 2018 I spent 6 months doing something that I was told would change my life…

Writing a morning gratitude list each day.

I was going through some dark times so the idea of something that took only 5 minutes that would help me enjoy life more sounded like a no brainer to try.

And so I did.

Each morning I’d sit down, open my journal and write down three things I was grateful for.

Some days it was easy. Other days I’d sit there struggling to write anything down.

I kept going, because that’s what you do, right? You trust the process, you show up. It had worked for so many others, surely it would work for me.

Except nothing changed.

If anything, those five minutes started to become an increasing source of frustration and set the opposite tone for the day than I wanted.

I mean, there I was - someone with a roof over my head, food in the fridge, friends messaging me, money in the bank plus so much more - and I couldn’t write just three things I was grateful for?!?

What did that say about me? I started to wonder if I was just fundamentally ungrateful. Or whether there was something wrong with me.

As more time went by I started to notice something. My morning gratitude practice became just another thing I needed to tick off my to do list - I was just going through the motions.

I started writing down anything. Things other people have said they’re grateful for, things I thought I should feel grateful or even just things I had others didn’t.

After around 6 months I decided to stop doing it. Despite all the benefits I’d read and people singing the praises of this practice - for me at that time, it wasn’t working.

And that’s where I left gratitude - and what a relief that was.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but that was not the end of my story with gratitude.

Over the following couple of years I would learn and experience some key things that would in time lead me to not only feeling gratitude but also enjoy my life so much more.

You Don’t DO Gratitude, You FEEL It

The first big takeaway from that 2018 gratitude experiment was that I wasn’t FEELING gratitude, I was doing it. And there’s a massive difference between the two.

I realised gratitude is a felt experience - it’s a feeling, not a thought or some task to do. It lives in your body, not your head.

I didn’t FEEL more grateful or enjoy life more because that would’ve required actually feeling. Instead my head said “job done, exercise complete - send me the benefits now please!”

When You’re In Survival Mode, Gratitude Is Hard To Feel

The next big realisation was when I shared my struggles around gratitude with a coach (John El-Mokadem).

John said something to the effect of… It’s no wonder you struggle to feel grateful Paul, to you, it looks like the world is burning down.

That hit me like a ton of bricks - I saw that although my external world looked relatively safe, my internal world was full of fear, stress, anxiety, overthinking and endless worry.

I was in full on survival mode. It felt like my brain couldn’t see any good, because it was so used to scanning for problems.

Notice & Appreciate The Extra-Ordinary Moments In Your Life

The final realisation I want to share came when a coach (Karen DiMarco) shared how so many of us are chasing these big extraordinary moments, but fail to see the daily extra-ordinary moments that happen all the time.

This was another wake up call for me. I was wanting gratitude to feel like these big amazing moments. What I saw in what Karen shared though was that there are so many moments in daily life that could wow you, if you only slowed down and took a moment to appreciate them.

My Gratitude Experience

There were many more realisations, ideas and experiences that contributed to what I am about to share - they all blended together and in 2020 quite unexpectedly the topic of gratitude became a theme I was exploring…

I was living in Spain and found myself on a couple of occasions spending 3-4 minutes looking at a bright orange flower. Not for any reason. Not as a practice. I wasn’t really conscious I was doing it to start with. I was just absorbed with this thing, I had this warm feeling of just enjoying and appreciating the flower.

As I look back now, it was very out of character just standing on a street not caring what passers by thought. As I stood there I felt something in me - I was filled with appreciation for this weird and wonderful creation.

That was it. That was the thing I'd been looking for all along.

Not a grand overwhelming wave of gratitude. Just a genuine feeling that was in response to something relatively ordinary. It was only after 3 or 4 times of this happening that I clocked what was going on. I didn’t try and recreate these moments, but I did say to myself, when they happen, let yourself immerse into the feeling for as long as it lasts.

When I got back to the UK in early 2021 I noticed I was doing the same thing with the daffodils and snowdrops coming out. Once again I hadn’t planned it nor was I trying to manufacture the same experience - I just found myself appreciating them as I went on my daily dog walk - and these feelings coming up.

I was curious about these experiences and wondered where else in my life might they be happening. Sitting on my favourite green sofa with a warm cup of tea. Enjoying the warmth of the sun on my skin. The connected feeling when a friend messages you.

I didn’t go searching or forcing these experiences, I just noticed when that familiar feeling arose within me.

At some point in 2021 I started writing these experiences down on sticky notes (I love sticky notes by the way!). Quickly I had too many to keep on my desk so put them on the wall in my hallway.

Making a chequered pattern with the sticky notes also became one of the things I really appreciated too!

I purposefully chose the hallway to place these notes, I knew having it in plain sight would be a really powerful reminder of how much I already had. It also became a living breathing representation of the feelings of gratitude I was experiencing internally.

Some days I’d find myself pausing to look at it - I might read one note and get on with my day, other times I enjoyed reading through so many of them. This again, became another part of the whole experience of immersing myself in the real feelings of appreciation and gratitude.

Unbeknown to me at the time, all of these little steps became my own powerful gratitude practice, one where I actually FELT grateful and started to enjoy life so much more.

It’s something that I’ve consciously returned to a couple times in the following years as and when I felt pulled to. My sweet spot has been to commit doing it for between 1 to 10 days - that seems to be enough to give me what I need and help me reconnect with gratitude, appreciation and enjoying daily life.

If anything I’ve shared stands out or interests you please do use it as part of your own journey of exploring gratitude - you might want to try my approach or use bits of it, totally up to you.

Take care,

Paul

P.S - I’m turning what I experienced here into a book called The Gratitude Experience. Coming soon!