Lessons from a year of gratitude journaling

At the start of this year, I set myself a goal of keeping a gratitude journal every day in January. To be specific, as one should be when setting goals, this meant writing down three different things everyday that I felt thankful for in a Google Keep page on my phone. 

Here we are at the end of 2025 and I’m still going. Why? 

Many of you will have heard of the five big personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. I won’t go into detail about all of them. However, I do want to mention something about the last one - neuroticism - that I believe is helpful for context. If someone is high in neuroticism, they have a strong propensity to experience negative emotions. To be slightly vulnerable, this is me. It’s something I’ve struggled with my whole life. 

Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with negative emotions. They are a fundamental part of the human experience. As we so often say at Phase, emotions are: 

• Normal: everyone has them. 
• Helpful: they are often trying to keep us safe or tell us stuff. 
• Important: they have a huge impact on our life so it’s important to understand and manage them.

Meanwhile, experiencing strong negative emotions all or most of the time can quickly become overwhelming for anyone. 

All of this is to say, I’m not writing this from the perspective of someone who, deep down, is naturally Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky. 

Anyway, here are some important lessons I’ve learnt from a year of practicing gratitude intentionally and daily...

Don’t be embarrassed about finding joy in the small things

Life moves so cripplingly fast. Social media keeps us in a state of constant comparison. It is despairingly easy to miss the myriad of minutia just waiting to put a smile on our face everyday. I know your friend just posted a photo dump from their trip to the Maldives but it’s ok for the conversation you had on the train with a stranger to be the highlight of your day. I know you’ve got that meeting to get to but it’s ok to drive at the speed limit and allow the sunrise to soothe your soul as you travel to it. We should be embarrassed that we have set the bar for thankfulness so high. Instead, it seems to many of us feel ashamed to share our joy in the simple or the small. As a cure for this, I have found that gratitude journaling forces me to notice the smallest of things.

You become what you practice 

If you lift weights regularly, you become stronger; your body changes. If you practice gratitude regularly, you become a more positive person; your brain changes. I genuinely feel like my brain’s default setting is different than it was this time last year. My perspective, the lens through which I see the world, has perhaps even taken on a rose tint. There is science to back this up. Each of our brains is equipped with a filter: our Reticular Activation System (RAS). Our RAS chooses what we focus on. It has evolved on a mission to keep us alive. Inherently, our brain filters out the world to see danger, bad stuff and worries - these are the things we need to notice to stay safe. You may also sometimes notice your RAS when you are being marketed to. Advertisers will try to get your brain to see that new pair of trainers as important and suddenly it feels like you notice them everywhere; you simply must buy them! My ultimate point is, counter to aforementioned points, we can actually leverage our RAS in a positive way. When we regularly seek to notice things we are thankful for, over time, we retrain our brain’s filter to be better at giving attention to good stuff. Turns out looking for different things to be grateful for everyday adds up to a pretty lengthy list. You can’t just write down food everyday. You will get better and better at noticing. Your brain’s positivity lens will get stronger and stronger. Gratitude Journaling is like a free membership to a positivity gym for your brain. 

Gratitude is a spiritual practice

As a Christian, I believe my gratitude doesn’t just echo around in an empty universe. My gratitude is directed towards a real historical person and friend: Jesus. Actually, not just any historical person and friend: the God who created the stars. I have so many reasons to be thankful for what God has created and done. Gratitude journaling has helped me connect with God in a new way. Furthermore, without wanting to sound too much like a productivity bro, gratitude journaling stacks pretty nicely with other spiritual habits. I have been better at reading my Bible, being present during worship and taking the time to pray this year. I give gratitude journaling a huge chunk of credit for this. In a way that I don’t quite understand, practising positivity seems to have hollowed out more room in my mind for God. I have become so much more aware of His presence this year. 

It’s ok to get emotional and celebrate stuff

Pride is very dangerous. We should certainly be careful not to be boastful. However, sometimes it is possible to go too far in the opposite direction; stubborn, self-serving, false humility can easily turn into pride. In the UK, we are renowned for having a tendency to want to (metaphorically) shoot people, or even ourselves, down. We even have a phrase for it: Tall Poppy Syndrome. My final point is that it’s ok to celebrate when things go well. We do enough dwelling when things go badly. It’s a good thing to share our wins honestly, vulnerably and ensure we give due credit to those who helped us along the way. It’s ok to use your story to inspire and connect with others. My close friends will know that historically I even refused to celebrate my birthday (for numerous reasons I won’t go into here). I think my years-long refusal may finally have broken. Gratitude journaling has helped me to feel comfortable actually celebrating stuff. This has enabled me to experience fully and honour properly huge things that’ve happened this year, not least getting married. 

I want to end with a vital disclaimer. While I would suggest that anyone could give gratitude journaling (or some kind of gratitude practice) a go, sometimes the challenges we face are complicated and difficult. Simply writing about stuff isn’t always enough. If that’s you, please know that you are loved and valued. Reach out to someone you trust or an organisation that cares. There will always be someone who can help, support and walk alongside you. 

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