I'm Grateful For - Beginners Gratitude Journaling Sheets

How to start writing your gratitude journal

Suggestion for before starting:

1. Meditate, go inwards for a few moments or minutes. Focus on your third eye to help you shift inwards.
2. Connect and receive. Feel yourself observing yourself. Feel yourself being aware. Stay here for a few moments.
3. Write things that you're grateful for

How to write the journal:

1. Write what you're grateful about, always starting the sentence with: "I'm grateful"
2. Keep it short and in one line, like bullet journaling.
3. Decide on your everyday 'goal'. For example, to write 1/5/10/20 grateful things? To fill the whole journal page? Continue until you finish your goal and stick to your goal everyday.

After journaling, what can you do?

1. Read a book that is spiritual in nature. Remind yourself of your true nature and the Divine within.
2. Do you daily spiritual lesson, if you have one.
3. Meditate again, if you feel that you needed to connect more.

(Watch my video guide for step by step on how to easily meditate -- https://youtu.be/yyJdrM-t_NY )

Tips for your journaling practice

1. Journal early, or first thing in the morning, when your mind is still relatively calm and slow. Programming it to be grateful when the mind is accepting will give you better result.
2. If it's challenging to come up with things to appreciate, start with appreciating nature. They are abundant and easy to see. This will get you going and rolling, and start the momentum to more gratitudes.
3. To begin with, always start by writing or typing the phrase "I'm grateful". This slowly starts the reprogramming of the mind to look for the appreciations and notice them more in your life.
4. If your problems are the only things that you can think about right now, turn it around and look for the silver lining. Make your lemons into lemonade. It's okay to be 'fake' for now, feeling like you're only pretending to see the good in your bad. You just need an opening to go through, and this can be it.
5. Write with pen and paper. It's so tangible, so obvious, so tactile, that the act of writing and moving the hand could improve your feelings and emotion.
6. Stay out of journaling your woes and problems. Focus on the positives. Remember that what you write about, you will get more of. At this point, in the beginning, pay attention only on the positives and things that you can appreciate. When your gratitude muscle is stronger, you may be able to detail your problems and turn them into gratitudes. But for now, start easy, and focus only on the positives.

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I started gratitude journaling when I felt miserable almost all the time. It was all dark and despair, and I was desperate for some light and cheerfulness in my life, to get away from the hopelessness that I was constantly feeling. 

I then started writing gratitudes and appreciations for things that I could see, because those were the easiest I could do, and the tangibles were something I could not deny- the sun, the birds, the home, the food, the air that I breathe. For a few minutes while I'm journaling, I had my refuge in things that felt wonderful for me. Gradually, feelings of appreciation, positive outlook, & joy came back to me in small doses. 

Slowly, by using these simple practices that anyone could do, I was elevated from misery to hope, to belief, to knowing, and to joy. Now, whenever I find myself back in my dark place, I know how to climb out of it. I have actual practical knowledge of how to do it, because after days and days and months and months of time doing it daily, it was ingrained in me. This continuous daily practice for appreciation journaling pulled me out of my perception of misery, and truly changed my life.