Practising Gratitude

In 2012 and 2013 I ran Attitude of Gratitude challenge blogs.  We all had a great time and I am thrilled to be hosting a third challenge blog on gratitude.  The first two blogs were through the month of November but I thought that it would be great to be thankful at other times of the year.

I was very taken by Brené Brown in her book 'The Gifts of Imperfection' when she wrote:

"For years, I subscribed to the notion of "an attitude of gratitude".  I've since learned that an attitude is an orientation or a way of thinking and that "having an attitude" doesn't always translate to a behavior.

For example, it would be reasonable to say that I have a yoga attitude.   The ideals and beliefs that guide my life are very in line with the ideas and beliefs that I associate with yoga.   I value mindfulness, breathing, and the body-mind-spirit connection.  I even have yoga outfits.  But, let me assure you, my yoga attitude and outfits don't mean jack if you put me on a yoga mat and ask me to stand on my head or strike a pose.   As I'm sitting here writing this, I've never practiced yoga.  I plan to change that between now and the time you're holding this book in your hand, but to date, I've never put the attitude into action.  So where it really matters - on the mat - my yoga attitude doesn't count for much.

So, what does a gratitude practice look like?   The folks I interviewed talked about keeping gratitude journals, doing daily gratitude meditation or prayers, creating gratitude art, and even stopping during their stressful busy days to actually say these words out loud: "I am grateful for . . ."  When the Wholehearted talk about gratitude, there are whole bunch of verbs involved.

It seems that gratitude without practice may be a little like faith without works - it's not alive."

Here is Brené talking about practising gratitude.

I was fascinated by the 'whole bunch of verbs' comment and so for the blog in May I have deliberately chosen verbs as the theme for each day and have included an action to do each day.   You may not be able to do the action on that particular day but you can be practising other actions.  In all we will have 21 days of art, thinking and practising gratitude.  I hope that by the end of May we will have moved from 'having an attitude' to a lifestyle of gratitude.

Find out about my journal for this project.

I hope you will join me.   To make sure you don't miss any of the blog posts complete the Email Subscription below to sign up for emails or follow by whatever means you usually follow blogs.


See you next week for more information on how The Art of Practising Gratitude will work.  Watch out for #21daysinMay2014.