My experience with the gratefulness challenge.

Studies have shown that the more grateful you are, the happier you become. This resulted into the gratefulness (or gratitude) challenge. The main idea is that you have to express gratitude on a daily basis, but I’ve seen it going around in different forms. There are no specific rules for this challenge and it can be as little as telling yourself “Today I was grateful for the nice weather”.

I’ve been doing the gratefulness challenge for half a year now. But does it work? Keep reading to find out.

“What are three things you’re grateful for today?”
That’s the question I ask myself every evening before going to bed. There are no wrong or right answers, although some people recommend to have enough variations in your answers. For me one of my often recurring answers is “I’m grateful for living in Norway”, simply because this is something I’m grateful for on a regular basis. Other times my answers will be very specific for that particular day, for example “I’m grateful that my evening meeting at work went smoothly”. You can be grateful for anything, even if it doesn’t affect you. And if you have a significant other it can be really fun and interesting doing this exercise together on a regular basis as well. “I’m grateful for you” is a beautiful sentence.

Source: giphy

Did it work? Is it worth doing it on a daily basis?
Yes and yes! I really like the effect this is having on me, I’m feeling way more aware of the positive things in life. Although I have to mention that I only started noticing the effects a few months in, so you might have a rough start. But don’t give up, it gets better and easier over time.

Positive about this exercise?
1. It makes you feel more grateful.
2. You become more aware of the positive things in life.
3. It’s easy and doesn’t take much time, so it’s easy to implement in your daily routines.

Negative about this exercise?
1. It might take a while before you start noticing the positive effects.
2. Some days it’s hard to come up with new things you’re grateful for and you will feel as if you’re repeating yourself. Which is fine.