Gratitude.  It’s a word that we hear about a lot.  I have known people to get fairly cynical about gratitude journals or other gratitude practices.  I have also known people to try to take the route of gratitude being the answer to everything. 

In my opinion, neither of these routes – rolling your eyes at keeping a gratitude journal or ignoring your problems and just trying to be grateful – is the right answer. 

Gratitude is not a panacea, nor is it rubbish. 

Gratitude is simply gratitude. 

• Gratitude is a reminder that we don’t live in a world filled only with problems.
• Gratitude acknowledges that while there are problems to solve and issues to be concerned about, we simultaneously have so many things to be grateful for.
• Gratitude can refocus us on the small joys around us, not to negate our other emotions (like sadness or anger or shame), but to round them out – to paint the full picture.

For some (OK, for me), it can be fairly easy to get stuck in the routine of focusing on all of the negative things in life.  Sometimes that feels like hopelessness.  It becomes habitual.  I know that there is an edge of perfectionism in me and the deep-rooted belief that I should not be happy unless I have solved not only all of my problems, but the problems of everybody asking me for help.

So for people like me, for people that get in the habit of focusing on the negative, it is so important to recognize that even while things are not going well in other areas of my life, I am still grateful for so many things. 

I find it important to remind myself that I am a complex and intricate person with many dimensions – and having negative qualities or negative events happening in my life does not negate any of the positive qualities or positive things happening around me. 

We are all beautiful mosaic that require the dark pieces as well as the light pieces. 

Because it’s sometimes easy to forget in a difficult moment what you are grateful for, it’s a good exercise to write them down.  Then you can quickly refer back to them when you are feeling low to remind yourself of some of your joys, big and small.

I like to imagine it like in the picture below, where my problems are depicted by the black dots, and the joys in my life are represented by the brightly colored dots. 

I can choose to focus on the black dots, ignoring all of the colors around me, because the black dots do exist.  Or I can choose to focus on the colorful dots, ignoring the black dots.  My preference though is to see them all – and accept that without the good and the bad, it isn’t an accurate representation of my life – the picture would be incomplete.

So, let’s get started creating the gratitude cards!

1. Write them down

The first thing to do is to get them on paper. 

• Grab a stack of index cards

Again, any index cards will do.  I always prefer colorful cards – especially for my gratitude cards.  But simple white cards will also work.  Each card should contain a single gratitude. 

• Start writing

Just rapid-fire write the cards.  One after the other. 

Sometimes once you start writing, the gratitude will just flow and sometimes it seems difficult to think of anything you are grateful for.  That’s ok.  Do what you can in this moment and come back to it later if necessary. 

No gratitude is too big and no gratitude is too small.  And don’t judge yourself for having too few things that you are grateful for.  Also, feel free to be as specific as you want to be – usually the more specific, the better.

Here is a sampling of what the cards might look like:

• The smell of rain in the springtime
• The sound of the windchimes on my patio
• The breeze in my sunroom
• Waking up to the smell of fresh coffee
• Hearing babies giggle
• The opening scenes of movies
• Picking up a new book for the first time
• The color of my living room curtains
• Dappled sunlight
• Sunsets over the mountains

Once you have them written, stack them up, and clip them with a paper clip.

• Revisit the cards regularly

In school, when we want to learn something that is hard to learn, we often make flashcards and we review these flashcards as often as we can to try to cement in the learnings. 

Think of these gratitude cards as gratitude flash cards.  Add to them with reckless abandon and go through them when you need a reminder of the sweetness of life, cementing in those things that you are grateful for. 

Everybody has things they are grateful for. Sometimes we may feel down and it’s hard to see those things.  But when we inevitably come back up we can more easily see the beauty around us.  So add to your gratitude cards generously, especially when you are feeling happy and joyful and when you are in a down phase of life, refer back to them to remind yourself of the joys in your life.

Ideas:

• Find a friend that is also doing gratitude cards and sit down with cups of coffee or tea and take turns naming your gratitudes out loud.
• Add pretty illustrations to your gratitude cards.
• Find stickers for the cards.
• Challenge yourself to add a certain number of new cards each day. 

Have fun with it!