I used to find it pretty wild anytime someone would start talking about gratitude practices. The whole idea seemed saccharine and superficial—a spiritual bypass it seemed for people unwilling to face life’s genuine challenges. Write down three things you’re grateful for each day? Please. That wouldn’t fix anything real. Now granted I’m talking many many moons ago cause I’ve been laying down my own gratefulness for a really long time.
Then came that autumn all those moons ago when my world started crumbling around me and everything fell apart all at once.
Within a six-week period, I went through a painful breakup ending a 20 year friendship, an unexpected loss of income during a necessary restructuring my business and the loss of a loved one. My carefully constructed life had disintegrated, leaving me alone in an apartment that no longer felt like home, questioning every assumption about my future.
The darkness that descended wasn’t just sadness—it was a profound disorientation that made even simple decisions feel impossible. Who was I outside of these friendships? What was my purpose without that career identity? How could I plan anything with life’s uncertainties always looming? Each morning brought a wave of dread so physical it felt like concrete in my chest.
It was during this period that a well-meaning friend gave me a gratitude journal. I accepted it politely while internally adding it to the mental list of unhelpful things people say when they don’t know what else to offer. The journal sat untouched on my nightstand for weeks as I navigated the practical chaos of a new side hustle to make up for lost income, therapy appointments, and emotional aftershocks.
Then came a particularly dark night when sleep wouldn’t come,(I’ve had a few of these) and the loop of catastrophic thoughts felt unbearable. Out of sheer desperation—and with more than a little skepticism—I reached for the journal. If nothing else, perhaps focusing on something different would interrupt the thought spiral long enough to find sleep.
What happened next wasn’t an overnight transformation. There were no angels singing or sudden epiphanies. I simply wrote down three small things: The neighbor who helped fix my outside light. The warmth of my coffee mug in my hands. The sound of rain against the window.
It felt mechanical at first, a meaningless exercise. But I committed to doing it for one week—not because I believed it would help, but because I had nothing to lose. Each night, regardless of how the day had gone, I would find three specific moments to acknowledge before sleep.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, something began to shift. The change wasn’t in my circumstances—I was still unemployed, still heartbroken, still having anxiety. The shift was in my perception. I began to notice things throughout the day that I might write down later: the particular quality of afternoon light in my kitchen, a kind text from an old friend, the relief of a hot shower after a long day.
This heightened noticing created tiny interruptions in what had been an unrelenting focus on everything wrong in my life. These weren’t distractions from reality but rather glimpses of a more complete reality that included both suffering and simple pleasures, both loss and continuing connection.
Three months into this practice, I experienced a moment that demonstrated how fundamentally my relationship with gratitude had changed. While waiting anxiously in a doctor’s office for test results, I found myself genuinely appreciating the worn mystery novel I’d brought along, the gentle efficiency of the good friends I still had, and even the complex capacity of my over-thinking mind to keep plugging away despite the challenges.
This wasn’t toxic positivity or denial of my hardships. It was the discovery that it’s possible to hold multiple truths simultaneously: This is hard AND there is still beauty. I am struggling AND I am supported. The future is uncertain AND this moment contains gifts.
The research on gratitude practice suggests I’m not alone in this experience. Studies from UC Davis psychologist Robert Emmons show that regular gratitude practice decreases depression, improves sleep quality, reduces physical pain, increases resilience to trauma, and strengthens immune function. What looks like a simple mindset shift creates measurable neurobiological changes.
But these scientific findings, while validating, don’t fully capture what I’ve come to understand as gratitude’s deeper function. At its core, gratitude practice isn’t about generating positive emotions or denying negative ones. It’s about counteracting the brain’s natural negativity bias—our evolutionary tendency to focus on threats and problems at the expense of everything else.
This bias served our ancestors well when survival depended on constant vigilance against predators and environmental dangers. But in contemporary life, this same vigilance often manifests as rumination, anxiety, and a skewed perception that overlooks the sustaining aspects of our experience.
Intentional gratitude practice doesn’t eliminate our awareness of challenges—it simply widens the lens to include what’s working alongside what isn’t. This expanded awareness creates psychological space that allows for more creative problem-solving, better emotional regulation, and access to inner resources that remain hidden when our focus narrows to threats alone.
Listen in here to the Blossom Your Awesome Podcast Ep. 38 Intentional Gratitude with Deborah Hawkins.
My daily practice has evolved considerably since those desperate first entries. What began as a mechanical exercise has become a deep relationship with gratitude that shapes how I move through the world. Rather than listing obvious blessings, I’ve found the most transformative practice involves noticing:
1. Ordinary moments that would typically go unacknowledged The quality of muscle relief after carrying something heavy. The particular blue of early evening through my kitchen window. The reliable function of electricity when I flip a switch. Noticing these unremarkable yet sustaining details creates a textured awareness of life’s constant gifts that exist regardless of our larger circumstances.
2. The web of support that makes my life possible From the farmers who grew my food to the engineers who designed the heating system in my, from the authors whose words keep me company to the therapists offering innovative treatments for healing—acknowledging this invisible network of human effort reminds me that even in my most isolated moments, I am held by countless connections.
3. Growth that emerges from difficulty The resilience I’ve developed through hardship. The deeper friendships that revealed themselves when superficial ones fell away. The clarity about priorities that comes only after losing what I thought I couldn’t live without. Practicing gratitude for these hard-won insights honors the full complexity of the human experience.
Today, my life looks quite different than it did during that autumn of collapse. I’ve built a career that is more robust and even more aligned with my values. I’ve developed a different understanding of relationships. My anxiety has stabilized, though with new limitations I continue to navigate.
But the most profound change has been internal. Gratitude hasn’t eliminated difficulty from my life—that was never its purpose. What it has done is train my attention to remain open to the whole of experience, keeping me from a narrative of victimhood or despair even in genuinely challenging times.
I don’t see gratitude as a naive practice for those unwilling to face reality. I understand it now as a revolutionary stance toward life—a deliberate resistance against the mind’s tendency to fixate on lack. It’s not about manufacturing positive feelings but about accurate perception: the recognition that suffering and blessing coexist in every life, including my own.
For anyone navigating their own season of collapse, I won’t suggest that gratitude is a quick fix or a substitute for necessary grief. What I can offer is the insight that even in our darkest moments, our attention remains one thing we can control. And where we place that attention shapes not just how we feel, but what possibilities we can perceive.
The simple journal that once felt like an insult to my pain has become a document of my most authentic journey—not away from suffering, but toward wholeness.
Check out my favorite guided therapy journals and notebooks – click on the image.
