Gratitude. Such a beautiful word, but what does it really mean in practice? If you’re into personal development, you’ve probably already heard the term.
I had heard it too, many times, and I always thought “yeah yeah, say thank you, got it”.
So I tried, I said thank you, but honestly I didn’t even know why I was doing it. My “thank you” sounded like empty words. I didn’t even know who I was saying it to.
I kept reading personal development books and that word always came back: gratitude.
But what were they on about with their gratitude? Did they want me to say thank you? For what, to whom, what for?
After years of reading personal development books and trying to “develop myself”, that’s where I had landed.
I was starting to understand how I needed to behave to succeed at what I attempted. I was questioning myself often, making discoveries, evolving — hopefully in the right direction.
And then there are always those moments when things go well and you tell yourself: yes, this is exactly how I should be doing it, I’ve found the solution! Motivation peaks.
So for maybe a month, or a week, or sometimes just two days, things would go well in my life.
But then comes that bottom, that moment when something goes wrong and you feel utterly low. As if all those efforts — efforts that weren’t really efforts — had been wiped out. You’re back at square one, asking yourself:
What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do this? Why do I feel this bad? Of course only those who ask themselves questions ask themselves these questions.
Spoiler: there is no problem. I understood it late, but “better late than never”.
So my journey came down to this: I know what I need to do to have the right mindset to accomplish what I want in life, but the hardest part — the part I can’t manage — is keeping that mindset. That’s what changes everything.
I kept falling back into my old patterns, letting negative energy come back over and over, because I’d always left room for it.
So it sounds silly, but one day I decided to really test the habit of gratitude.
What helped me at first was a book I had read, “The Power of Your Subconscious Mind”, which explained that one of its techniques was to repeat “Thank you, father, for my wealth” — or to repeat and feel the meaning of the word “wealth”.
And I have to admit, it had worked very well for me — it was a particularly prosperous period. I had this small habit of taking a few minutes to repeat it, and while doing it I felt really, really good (which is the most important part, by the way).
That habit, which was working, I later abandoned. Why?
Because we’re humans who forget so many things. If we actually thought about it, we know what we need to do to feel better, we know what has helped us most — but do we make the right choices for that? (No.)
I abandoned it, but looking back I realized that this had actually been my first real experience of gratitude, and it had worked for me.
So I started again, slowly and rather painfully, by saying “Thank you father for my wealth, thank you mother for my wealth”. Because yes — thank you, mom, who contributed and contributes enormously to my wealth.
It was hard because it wasn’t natural at first. We’re so used to complaining, and here we have to “force” ourselves to say thank you.
The first two weeks were hard, but little by little I felt more and more grateful. At the start I had one gratitude sentence; two weeks later I had five or ten.
I really started developing this habit, especially thanks to a very simple but, for me, very effective app.
It’s a kind of journal where I would write each day what I was grateful for. For a whole month, I filled in the journal every day. I told myself there were no big changes, but I liked the habit — as if I had already adopted it.
Another month went by. I kept doing it every day. Then I looked back, and that’s the exact moment I realized it: all these little things adding up. I was now able to write for ten minutes in my journal. I was grateful throughout the day, and in fact everything was going well. I was doing it without really thinking about it. I was grateful every day, and I could feel the universe giving me more joy than I could imagine.
So I felt even more gratitude. Recognizing my luck, realizing it a little more each day. Everything was going well, and me, who had never been able to hold a positive state, was now feeling truly good. I had just realized I had been like this for two months.
And above all, I realized I had never felt this good in my life, and I was grateful for it — and I knew it could only keep getting better if I kept going. That state of unease didn’t exist. It was an illusion I had let live, that I had left in place without solving the problem at the root.
This app really changed my life. It’s what allowed me to finally hold my positive state, the one in which I know I can operate at my full potential. Of course it’s not the app alone that did the work — it’s my intention, the fact that I wanted to do this.
At first, gratitude was a very obscure word to me, devoid of meaning, of power. But it’s only by really trying it that I came to understand.
We forget so easily. I had forgotten what my first experience of real gratitude — “thank you father for my wealth” — had brought me. Had I even fully realized at the time what it had given me?
Yes it’s hard, especially if you start very low. Why say thank you when it feels like you have nothing, when everything is going wrong, when no one loves you, when you have no one to lean on? Honestly, I have no magic tricks to tell you how to start, how not to quit, how to practice it properly.
You have to want it. Do you want to feel good? Do you really want to feel better in your life? Are you ready?
If you’ve read this far, know that I’m extremely grateful — that you could read a bit of my experience, and if it has helped you even a little, I’m all the more grateful. Thank yourself for reading these lines, for taking time for yourself. You’ll have made a step toward gratitude. Thank you for your reading.
I built an app for myself to maintain my gratitude habit. I hope with all my heart it can help you the way it helped me. I’d be very happy to hear your thoughts.