Navigating Mental Health | Self-Care Chronicles | Embracing Personal Growth

Achieve a Better Mood with Self-Focused Gratitude Journal

I’m not one to spend time maintaining my mental health by journaling my feelings like every single mental health professional recommends doing. When I tried it, I just dug up all the bad stuff in my life and recorded it to have forever. I wanted to be as far away from that shit as possible. But I fully believe there are rituals that we do every day that can change our moods. Some take more time than others, but there is one simple activity that I have found that elevates my mood every day–a gratitude journal. But wait, don’t roll your eyes, this journal is different. Keeping a gratitude journal can significantly contribute to a better mood.

At the end of each day, I write down what I’m grateful for about myself. I look inside myself, instead of looking outside myself and write down supercool things about me. It’s a gratitude journal, but with a twist.  Some nights it’s tougher to come up with something, other nights I’m just overflowing with gratitude for me, me, me.

Basically, for those of us looking for a simpler way then journaling to stop and smell the roses, acknowledging what we’re grateful for can be kind of helpful for our moods. What’s written below explains the twist that I have with my gratitude journal. This twist enhances the effectiveness of a gratitude journal in that you have to look inside and find the good. Whether you’re in a deep depression isolating yourself or suffering from anxiety, it is possible to find the good. I started my journal when I was an inpatient for treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, and panic disorder. Try coming up with anything good about yourself in that situation. But if I can do it, anyone can..

In a recent article in the New York Times, writer Melissa Kirsch talked about how just writing down what your grateful for means you must look outside yourself and depend on outside events to give you gratitude. “I’d tried practicing gratitude before and found it quite effective,” writes Kirsch. “You take a few minutes to write down things you’re thankful for — the kindness of a stranger, the way your child looks at you while you’re reading a bedtime story, the smell of honeysuckle when you bike past that one tree.”

But after someone pointed out that she needed to look outside herself to make herself feel better, a friend suggested that she do something different. Write down as much as you can each day about how you appreciate yourself. Your instinct can be to jump to negative feelings about yourself. But challenge yourself throughout the day to look for things about you that you like. Recognizing self-appreciation within your gratitude journal can lead to a better mood over time.

“When someone first recommended I try this, I thought it sounded very self-involved, maybe a little pathetic — was my self-esteem so impoverished that I needed to ply myself with compliments? (It turns out that some days, in fact, I do.)” says Kirsch. “But over time I realized that what at first seemed facile was actually sort of revolutionary.” This revolutionary approach is why a gratitude journal can be such a compelling tool for achieving a better mood.

So instead of waiting for someone else to say something appreciative about you, which Kirsch calls “outsourcing,” do it yourself. After this becomes a habit for you’ll start liking yourself more and behaving in a way that creates these appreciative moments. Your gratitude journal will then become an essential tool for improving your mood.

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