Cultivating gratitude is a powerful exercise in putting a smile back on your face. But how do you actually go about it? In this article, I propose a 30-day challenge to learn how to cultivate gratitude on a daily basis.

1 – Why cultivate gratitude?

Practicing gratitude is an ideal way to put a smile on your face, but we don’t always know how to go about it.

Gratitude is the art of feeling grateful. Ultimately, it’s the art of focusing on all the good and beautiful already present in our lives.

Gratitude allows us to feel connected to others and to life. We feel like we’re receiving gifts every day, and that feels good.

Yet in practice, as the days go by, the gratitude exercise can seem redundant. We’re often grateful for the same things.

That’s why, to combat boredom and therefore abandonment, I’ve created a 30-day challenge. 30 days to feel grateful for the thousand and one things in your daily life.

2 – Cultivating gratitude for 30 days: preparation

For this challenge, I invite you to take a notebook and a pencil. Put them in a strategic place, in other words, a place you pass by every day, or better still, several times a day.

If you put your notebook and pencil in a drawer, chances are you’ll forget about them.

Then write down the following 30 sentences and list your answers, day by day.

To list your answers, take a moment to breathe calmly and close your eyes if necessary. After all, the aim here is not to think, but to let your heart speak.

So breathe, let go and write down what makes your heart glow with joy.

If you can’t find the answers right now, keep the question in mind and go on with your day. The answers will come.

3 – 30 days of gratitude

1 – The 3 people I’m most grateful to

2 – The 3 things I like best in the morning

3 – The 3 activities I prefer during the day

4 – My 3 favorite evening moments

5 – The 3 things in nature for which I feel like saying thank you

6 – The 3 things I enjoy doing most

7 – My 3 best memories

8 – My 3 best dreams

9 – The last “chance” that did things right

10 – The last good dish I ate

11 – The last time I felt joy

12 – That I felt a strong feeling of love

13 – That I felt a strong sense of inner peace

14 – My latest success story

15 – The last thing or person that made me laugh

16 – The last good news I learned

17 – The last good book I read

18 – The last good movie I saw

19 – The last present I received

20 – The last treat I gave myself

21 – The 3 objects I like best in my home

22 – My 3 best qualities

23 – The 3 human values I love most

24 – The 3 human inventions that make my life more pleasant

25 – The 3 things I’m grateful for that my body lets me do

26 – The 3 parts of my body that I love the most

27 – The 3 things I liked yesterday

28 – The 3 things I love today

29 – The 3 things I’ll like tomorrow

30 – If I were to live my last day today, what 3 things would I be most grateful for?

4 – Never stop cultivating gratitude

Never stop cultivating gratitude, because feeling grateful is what makes us happy.

Gratitude allows us to focus on what’s good and beautiful in our lives. Because in our day-to-day lives, we tend to focus on what’s wrong: on those people who stress us out, on those moments that don’t really make us happy.

And, by dint of focusing on the less beautiful and less good parts of our lives, we end up believing that our lives are neither very beautiful nor very good.

But cultivating gratitude invites us to change our vision of our lives. Yes, not everything is good or beautiful, but there is good and beautiful.

What’s more, gratitude enables us to use the Law of Attraction. In fact, there’s a law of the Universe that says: whatever we pay attention to gains in importance.

In other words, the more we focus on the negative, the more negative we attract. And the reverse is also true.

That’s why cultivating gratitude on a daily basis is so powerful, because the more grateful we feel, the more reasons the Universe sends us to be grateful. It’s like magic.

Find out more:

I invite you to read these 2 complementary articles:

Discover Be content with what you have: 7 tips to say goodbye to frustration
Discover How to create positive emotions: 8 great exercises

I recommend this inspiring book:

365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life by John Kralik
The author shares his transformative experience cultivating gratitude through the simple act of writing thank-you notes. Faced with personal and professional challenges, John Kralik embarked on a year-long practice of expressing gratitude, discovering the profound impact it had on his life. The book highlights the power of gratitude as a daily practice, demonstrating how a shift in perspective toward gratitude can lead to positive change, improved relationships and a more fulfilling life. 365 Thank Yous is a compelling testament to the transformative power of gratitude to cultivate a life richer in meaning and appreciation.

When the author focused on what others around him did for him and was grateful for it, he saw his life in a different light. I like this perspective of counting the blessings I’ve already received, rather than complaining about what I don’t have. Start sending thank-you cards. You’ll make a difference.
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Thank you very much for reading this article.

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Take care of yourself