Harnessing Gratitude: Transforming Life through Journaling and Deepening Connections

Imagine spending just a few minutes each day to transform your outlook on life. That's what I discovered when I embarked on my personal journey with gratitude journaling, a simple yet profound practice that has become a beacon of positivity in my life. As we share a cup of tea, I recount my experiences and reveal how writing down things I'm grateful for in the last 24 hours not only helped me appreciate the small moments in life but also shifted my focus to the positive aspects. 

But the magic doesn't stop at journaling. As we delve deeper into the topic of gratitude, you'll learn that it’s much more than just a feel-good emotion. It's a potent tool that can pivot our lives in extraordinary ways. I share how gratitude has deepened my friendships and brought about feelings of joy, love, and happiness that were often overlooked. So, grab your notebook and your favourite cup of tea, and join me on this enlightening journey. Let's harness the power of gratitude and make life truly amazing and rewarding.

Transcript

TJ: 0:15

Hey friends, it's TJ and you're listening to Tea with TJ. Where our love for tea?

TJ: 0:21

conversation and self-improvement intersect.

TJ: 0:24

So let's take a deeper dive into my cup and let's have a chat.

TJ: 0:34

Hey friends, it's TJ, so today I am having some black tea. I wanted something a little more robust today, and I think that goes hand in hand with our topic for the show today, which is gratitude journaling. Let's dive in. For me, gratitude journaling is almost like a warm hug for the soul. It's a practice that I feel like can bring a lot of positivity and joy to your life and also help to appreciate the small moments in life that I feel like we sometimes overlook. Now, I've always been the type of person that led with positivity and optimism. It's just how I grew up. It's always been in me, even as a child. But within the last few years, I've felt like I lost sight of what can truly be possible and the beauty in that and so about, I would say. Two years ago, I had a conversation with a friend who recommended gratitude journaling to me and I was skeptical at first.

TJ: 1:47

Don't get me wrong.

TJ: 1:49

But I thought I would give it a try and I will admit that after the first few prompts I started to feel better and I started to notice my view of the world had changed. Thank you so much. It really kind of just transformed me and shaped me, I think, into the person that I am now and has allowed me to space to really reflect and meditate on the small joys of life. It really showed me, it showed me how to appreciate the little things more and I do feel like age has helped that in combination with gratitude generally. But I will say that in my experience of going through the prompts daily, that it really just opened me up to allow myself to appreciate everything and it kind of it reengaged my senses a little bit, especially in this type of city where it's very easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle or the momentum that you have just going through your life and trying to get to the next thing and making sure you're taking care of yourself and doing all of those other things. But this idea really helped me to kind of just refocus recenter and really look at things through a different lens, and so I just wanted to share with you today what gratitude journaling is and how powerful it can be even in its simplicity. All you need is a journal or notebook and a few minutes each day. So start with jotting down things that you're grateful for, and they can be anything right. They can be as big as your dreams being accomplished, or even as small as the smell of something or the aroma of something.

TJ: 4:07

One of the first prompts that I tried fairly frequently was what am I grateful for in the last 24 hours, and especially living in a city where sometimes you can't remember what you ate? Last week, it was insightful and helpful to just kind of engage with my life a little more and not be so passive about it. Right, and one of the things that I used to write down was that I'm grateful for this cup of tea, or I'm grateful for the smell of the trees, I'm grateful for the smile that I got at the grocery store last night while I was shopping, and it really kind of opened my mind and allowed me to really acknowledge and comprehend and see and appreciate those little nuances and those little moments throughout life, because I feel like we so often kind of just throw those things away. Right, we forget about the random smile that we got at the grocery store. We forget about how nice someone was or a compliment that someone gave us, and so, in my experience of starting that journey of gratitude journaling, it started to open my eyes to how beautiful life can be, how exceptional it can be, how magical it can be if you just open your eyes, right, If you just take a moment to stop and look at it.

TJ: 5:43

Because I feel like we can lose sight of how beautiful this world actually is when we're so stuck in our own little bubble, right, and the things that we're trying to do, which is not a terrible thing, right, we want to focus, we want to maintain our momentum and try to achieve things, but it really allowed me to go beyond myself and to engage with life and to appreciate it on a deeper level.

TJ: 6:14

The key to gratitude journaling is to be as specific as you possibly can, right? So don't just say I'm grateful for my family, right. Think of it, rephrase it, reframe it to say I'm grateful for the laughter that I shared with my family doing Sunday dinners, right? That way, you're able to recount these moments in your life that do bring you joy, that do bring you peace, that bring love into your life and makes your heart full, and one of the specific moments that I can remember is it was like a fall day one year and whatever was going on that year, it was something happening and I remember looking up on the walk home and seeing the leaves change on the trees and thinking to myself, that's such a beautiful thing and we take it for granted.

TJ: 7:11

Every year, right, it kind of just gets swept up and how things are supposed to be, and I remember writing it down that night I'm grateful for seeing the leaves change colors, because it reminds me how beautiful life can be.

TJ: 7:35

And I will say that gratitude journaling also, it doesn't just shift you as a person, it shifts your focus to positive aspects of life. And I think that's sometimes that's where we are lacking when it comes to trying to be better for ourselves, right. We're focusing on okay, I have to do this thing in order to get better. I have to do this thing to then shift me into level two. But I think gratitude journaling is one of those things that can really kind of help you focus on the positive aspects of your life and not get stuck or hung up on, or it has to be done this kind of way, right, because then it starts to open up your mind, to really start to appreciate what you have and what you're grateful for, and kind of rewires your brain for happiness in a way, right Like it opens you up to the things that make you smile, that bring you joy, that gives you those fuzzy feelings inside, right. It's almost like a life hack to contentment in a way. So I got a new journal because my other one was full. It's called the Spark One Sentence Journal and I haven't started writing in it yet because I took a few days off, but the thing I love about this journal is that it gives me it's in tune with my artist's perspective and gives me prompts that are sensory based. So, like one of the prompts is a memory spark, or like all of the prompts are called sparks right, and it's meant to have you engage with things that brought you joy or happiness or love. And one of my favorite sections thus far is memory sparks and it says use the prompt below to spark a memory in one sentence Think about who, what, when, where of each moment to transport yourself back to that place and feeling. And so I quickly skimmed through this and they have a smell in here, like your spark smell, and I can't wait to dive into this because I've always been like a sensory person and so smells, textures, colors, feelings have like tangible meaning for me, like the smell of like fresh baked bread or soup cooking in the winter, or the smell of like snow when it first falls, like all of those things stand out in my memory, and so this journal, I think, is perfect for those who have that kind of sensory memorization when it comes to wanting to recount like joyful moments in your life, when thinking about and you don't have to buy something like this in order to practice gratitude journaling. You can write your own props, you can look them up online if you just wanna get a head start, but it's literally just something that is specific, that you are grateful for and, again, try to be as specific as you possibly can so that you can recount a moment that you've had in your life. I'll just throw a few out there.

TJ: 11:26

You know, think of, like my favorite again. My favorite is you know, what am I grateful for in the last 24 hours? But you could say something like what am I grateful for in the past year or six months? Or what am I grateful for in my career? What am I grateful for within my family? What am I grateful for when it comes to love?

TJ: 11:53

You know, one of my thoughts is you know, I'm grateful for the love I receive from my friends that treat me like family. That's a specific point of view, and I know that I have those types of friends where we've been friends for years and it's at that point in our lives where we consider family right. We can talk about anything, we can tell each other anything, and it's beyond just a regular quote, unquote friendship now, where we are brothers or sisters or, you know, cousins. So I encourage you to try gratitude journaling, because it could potentially invoke feelings that you've forgotten about and allow you to have more joy and love and happiness in your life. And remember that gratitude can really make life more amazing, more rewarding in the feelings that we have when it comes to gratitude, to have the power to potentially shift us in so many ways. And with that, I'll see you next week.

TJ: 13:15

And that's our show, friends, thanks for joining us on tea with TJ. Please rate, review and subscribe, and you can find us on Instagram at tea with TJ podcast. And, as always, stay kind, keep sipping and remember we're here, so we might as well do it.