How Gratitude Journaling Can Boost Your Self-Esteem and Change Your Mindset
What is ‘Gratitude Journaling’?
A Gratitude Journal is basically a diary of the things you feel grateful for every day, it’s not something that has to take ages to do. It’s a great way to reflect on the day, especially if you are feeling down and need cheering up.
We often forget these small acts of kindness even though it made us feel good in that moment. Especially if you have had a bad day and your mind is all over the place. By writing it down, you remember it and see some good in your day, which is great if you don’t have much self-esteem.
Benefits of Gratitude Journaling
Evidence suggests that practising gratitude can help you feel more positive and satisfied with your life, which can reduce depression and help with mental resilience, improve sleep, boost self esteem, and improve your mental and physical health. Research shows that every time you express gratitude, Dopamine and Serotonin releases in the brain. These are like happy chemical messengers which send messages between your nerve cells. Dopamine is released when your brain is expecting a reward like your favourite food or drink. Serotonin is the key hormone that stabilises our mood, feelings of well-being and happiness. Both are important for mental health. They affect your mood, sleep, memory, appetite, libido and more.
How Gratitude Journaling can help your mental health
Our mental health is more important than ever. We are often too busy with our lives to focus on ourselves and it can feel selfish to do something for us, well in actual fact it's selfless. What do the flight attendants say on the plane? Make sure you put your mask on before you help others. It’s so true, if you look after yourself first you’ll be able to look after others.
Spending 5 minutes a day reflecting and writing what you feel grateful for is going to make you feel so much better and I’m sure you can spare 5 minutes.
Making Gratitude Journaling a Habit
You can choose to journal whenever it feels best for you. Lots of people like to do it just before bed so they can reflect on the day they’ve just had and others when they get up to help them have a good day. It’s what’s best for you and when you will definitely do it. It’s great to get into a habit as quickly as you can, as it will become second nature. At first it might feel strange writing down the things you feel gratitude for, but you will get used to it. There are the obvious ones like your family, home, or car etc. If you write down your car, really think about what it would be like to not have your car. Think about when your car is in the garage for the day and it’s annoying that you can’t just pop to the shops. It helps you to really feel it on a deeper level. Start looking for random acts of kindness, things like someone helped you in the supermarket, maybe a friend checked in on you, a neighbour took in a parcel or simply a stranger smiled at you. Knowing that someone has gone out of their way for you will have a positive effect on the way you feel about yourself and boost your self-esteem.
You have thousands of thoughts per day that you probably aren’t aware of as you’re in your subconscious mind 95% of the time and your brain filters them. If you feel that things aren’t going right for you at the moment or you aren’t good enough, your brain will focus on these things and show you evidence for you to think that you aren’t good enough, it can be small things like you’ve forgotten to do something and your brain will think “see you aren’t good enough”. If you focus on the things that are going right and the reason’s you are good enough, then your brain will show you evidence of those, making you feel things are going well or you are good enough. By switching your focus on the small things that you are grateful for, it will help to change this.
If you make this part of your daily routine, you will definitely notice a shift in your mindset.
You don’t have to buy a special book, you can use any notebook, but if you feel you’d like an actual Gratitude Journal then I have a gorgeous range.
Good luck!
Love, Lisa x