Daily Gratitude: The Gratitude Calendar Technique

The Gratitude Calendar technique helps to practice and cultivate gratitude on a daily basis, and to cultivate a more optimistic attitude to life in general. It involves writing at the end of the day everything you can remember you enjoyed that day on a calendar so that you can look back and see the weight of all the fun and happy things you've done! I go over some common problems and ways you can develop them in the talk. Enjoy and I hope it's helpful!

Transcript

So hi there,

Welcome to the session.

So today let's just take a little look at a small technique for practicing gratitude on a daily basis,

For cultivating a greater sense of gratitude on a daily basis and really sort of generally cultivating a more optimistic outlook on life kind of in general.

So with that said let's just jump straight into the technique.

So this is what I like to call the gratitude calendar technique and the idea is basically at the end of every day to write down on a calendar all the things you can remember from that day that you enjoyed.

So this is not a thing of kind of trying to list everything you did or list everything you did that you enjoyed,

Just trying to think of as many things that you can remember that you enjoyed.

So the point of the exercise is to reflect,

Just to take time to reflect and to kind of solidify that gratitude and that appreciation by putting thoughts into words and writing them down.

Okay so we're not trying to write them down so we can come back to them later or anything,

We're just trying to write them down to kind of go through that process of reflection of kind of realising what in our day we've enjoyed and sort of just for a moment,

Just for a moment bringing our attention to kind of what we've enjoyed and in that way,

Like I say,

We can cultivate a bit more of a kind of optimistic attitude in life and just general kind of positivity because you might start to notice more when you're doing things you enjoy,

You notice more when you're reflecting which things you did enjoy and which things actually maybe you didn't enjoy quite as much as you thought you did and it also,

It might sort of lead to you being able to,

When you're sort of doing things throughout your day,

Sort of notice things and then be able to say kind of,

Okay maybe that's something I'll compile my calendar later or something like that,

Maybe not even quite like that,

Maybe just sort of noticing things you're enjoying which you didn't know you were enjoying before.

So that's really the gist of the technique,

Just to kind of clarify obviously you will need a calendar for that and probably something to write on it with otherwise you might find it a little bit difficult to write on a calendar.

I would say because quite a few people have their calendars already,

Number one obviously we need enough space to be able to write on it,

It's no good having ones where there's no space to write anything.

My calendar that I use has about sort of inch by half inch or three quarter inch spaces,

That's for me sort of pretty much ideal,

You can have less space,

You can have more space,

Whatever fits you best.

But one thing I would mention is if you have a calendar which you're already using to sort of plan things,

To write things in the future on,

It's probably best to sort of see if you can get another one for the gratitude calendar kind of technique because you just don't really want to confuse sort of things from the past and things in the future and also it gives you more space,

It's more focused if you're just using this calendar to think of kind of what's made you,

Or what you're grateful for throughout the day.

So with that said,

That's as I say pretty much the technique,

Very simple,

Very straightforward,

Very easy to practice but really is kind of very useful,

You know I've been doing it for the last couple of years and I'm very grateful for it because it does help you to reflect even when you've had bad days,

Many many occasions I've had what I thought were absolutely rubbish days and I've gone and written things on my calendar in the evening,

I can't actually,

There were quite a lot of things there which I did really enjoy doing and some days you won't have as many things and some days you will have too many things to write on,

That's just the course of life,

That's kind of the unique beauty of the lives we live,

That's sort of just how it goes.

So as I say,

That's the technique,

So let's now look at a couple of frequent problems because obviously I've been practicing this for a few years,

I know some other people who've practiced it in the past,

Who I've talked to it about and so there seem to be a couple of problems which come up not uncommonly,

Not always but it's not uncommon like I say that they might arise.

So the first issue that a couple of people have is feeling,

Looking,

You get to the end of the day,

You write your things you're grateful for on the calendar and you look and you go it's not very many things,

Not very much or maybe you think my life's so boring,

What have I got to do,

Just this and that and that's pretty much it,

I'm not going out skydiving or anything like that and obviously skydiving is a bit of a silly example but just things like sort of like not going out to see friends or going on nights out or whatever,

Going on big holidays or anything like that so it is very easy to look at your calendar and think oh no,

My life's so boring,

It's so sort of uneventful and the response to that I think would be that you're setting your standards too high,

The whole point of this exercise is to practice gratitude,

To appreciate things that you might not otherwise appreciate and I think this is another kind of subtle kind of process that's going on there in the background of this technique which is kind of appreciating smaller things.

So for example sometimes if I have a particular meal I enjoy I might say something like nice dinner or nice lunch or even nice breakfast,

Anything and that's a really small thing,

I eat all those meals every day so what's special about them but still if I've enjoyed them well that's it,

That's all I need and it's really appreciating the small things in life sometimes.

I'll go on usually around about three walks every day,

Relatively short walks but still almost every day I will write good walks because they were enjoyable,

It's sort of like oh you do them every day,

Yeah yeah but I mean each one of them is kind of unique in a way,

Even if it's not I still enjoy it,

Why else would I do it so much?

So I think that's the thing,

If you're sort of looking at it and thinking oh it's boring,

Oh it's uneventful,

You've got to say no no no no no,

You've got to reduce your standards a little bit,

Just pull them back and just say hey look at this sort of stuff and start to appreciate it if you can,

The little things that you might not have thought about otherwise,

Meals,

Walks,

Anything else you do regularly,

Even if you can get a sandwich every day during work or something on a lunch break and on a particular day the sandwich happens to be particularly nice or the process of buying it was particularly pleasant or straightforward,

There was a friendly person selling it or something like that,

Little things such as that and I think that finding it boring or not finding it boring but looking at your sort of gratitude calendar and saying oh that's really uneventful,

I think that's a really good opportunity to actually sort of notice that maybe your standards are a bit high and maybe you should take that opportunity to be able to appreciate smaller things.

I found personally it really does help to realise and to understand that actually there can be just as much value,

Just just just as much value in the small things which many people might consider kind of mundane and everyday as there can be in bigger things,

You know,

Anything from sort of just going and seeing some friends to going to a wedding or something,

Something big like that,

There can be just as much value in those things and that's really part of the point of this technique.

So that's that first problem of looking at the calendar and feeling like your kind of day to day life is a bit boring or uneventful,

I think really just try and take your standards down a little bit because there's a lot of things to appreciate in life and they're all different sizes.

So let's have a look at a second problem then and that is when people sort of take it too seriously,

Take the whole exercise too seriously,

They sort of,

And I know because I've occasionally been guilty of this,

Although I'm usually quite good at catching myself before it before it runs away.

People they they get to do in their calendar and they go,

Oh my goodness me what what did I do?

Oh,

I can't remember this or I can't remember I'm sure there was something else.

You don't need to worry about that.

Okay,

Chill,

Chill out about it.

Because you really the point of this is to reflect,

Okay,

On the things you can remember and to practice going,

Oh,

Yeah,

That was nice.

That was really enjoyable.

Oh,

Yeah,

I did enjoy that or,

You know,

Just just generally appreciating the day,

You don't need to look at every single aspect,

You don't need to practice every kind of practice gratitude with every single thing you've been grateful for.

The point is just to notice it to reflect and spend a moment reflecting,

Just sort of putting your attention putting your focus on that kind of on things that you enjoy and things that you have enjoyed throughout the day.

That's the kind of cultivating optimism side of it.

So that's the thing.

It's meant to be a nice thing,

This technique,

Okay,

Not a chore,

It's supposed to be nice reflection.

So you don't have to be get all kind of,

You know,

Frazzled and in a big,

You know,

Freak out or something because you can't remember everything.

Not that many people will but but but you know,

It's perfectly perfectly okay if you do.

But just just remember just try and remind yourself this is not supposed to be a chore.

This is not supposed to be remember everything and write it down.

This is just supposed to be a nice little reflection and the writing part as I say is just kind of giving those kind of thoughts a bit more weight,

Just solidifying them and practicing that reflection,

Practicing that gratitude by putting thoughts into words and through the action of then writing them down.

So that's that's really that kind of that final issue.

Those are the main two problems that I've kind of heard about it.

Maybe there might be others and if you kind of come across others do feel free to sort of leave a comment if you want to leave a review on this or to to message me directly or something.

And maybe I'll see what I can do things like this.

Because that you know,

There could be all manner of different things.

And that kind of leads me on to my sort of next point,

Which is take this and develop it for yourself.

Okay,

This is my technique,

Which I've been using,

Right,

Which I'm sharing with you in case it's it's useful.

And by all means,

Sort of use it as you want.

Obviously,

It's just a mindfulness technique.

But certain aspects of it might not work for you.

Some aspects might work better for you,

Some aspects which I'm not using might work better for you.

So really sort of take this more as kind of guidance as inspiration,

You know,

You can use it as it is,

If you like,

Or you can change it,

You know,

But you don't have to use a calendar,

For example,

You can just write it down on a sheet of sheet of paper or something,

You can maybe do just a maximum of three or five things you enjoyed,

Or maybe just one.

If you want,

You can write it on a calendar where you've got plans and other things,

Just one thing just in the corner or something,

Whatever you like,

However you want to do it,

However works best for you.

Simply just sort of,

You know,

Explore and see how it's somehow sort of how things work for you,

Whether they work better,

Whether they work not quite so well.

As I said,

I hope it helps,

Feel free to get in contact if you have any suggestions or if you have a particular way of doing it you are particularly happy with,

Or anything like that.

So thanks for coming along today and I will see you next time.

Bye bye.