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‘What I’ve been reading‘ posts have been few and far between here on The Dainty Squid. I just haven’t been making reading a priority lately. I dooo, however, have a book recommendation for you!

Something I really wanted to do this year was focus on the good. It sounds cheesy but honestly, it’s incredibly easy to just get hung up on the bad things in life. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve gotten home and immediately told Jeff about somebody driving poorly instead of the gorgeous sunset that I just witnessed. I want to change that. I feel like it takes a lot to rewire your brain to stop being so negative but I also think that it’s something worth working on – OF COURSE. All that to say, I recently decided I wanted create a habit of making little lists of good things.

Right after thinking about starting a gratitude journal I happened to stumble upon this one. The sassy cover roped me in. I bought it immediately. Obviously you don’t need a special book to write positive things in but I mean, it certainly doesn’t hurt. Plus once you find the perfect one, it makes you extra excited to get started, and actually keep up with your goal.

The book has a brief introduction about how important having a gratitude journal is. Studies have even shown that having one has an impressive range of benefits such as better sleep, higher levels of positive emotions, acting with more generosity, feeling less loney… The list goes on!

After that you’ll find that the left side contains quotes and the right side is where you’ll do your writing. (TBH, I am not a quote person. I could not care less about this half of the book.) Each of the writing sections says “Why I’m grateful today, more or less:” and has fifteen lines for you to journal your little heart out. The top of the page has a small section for the date, and the bottom has little mood faces to choose from to record “today’s gratitude level”.

Clearly this book was made with the intention of you using each page as a seperate day but I’ve never really been huge on journaling. List making is more my style so I’ve been writing little positive highlights from each day in the following style:

1-22 found TWO plastic soldiers on the beach!
1-22 facetiming Jeff right as he facetimed me.
1-26 bike rides yelling ‘happy friday!’
1-27 being woken up with back rubs.
1-31 got my wedding dress – I look like a princess!!!
2-5 sunshine on snowy days.
2-10 DIY haircuts gone right.
2-11 sledding with the kids!

(Those are actual things I wrote in my book.)

It may not seem like much but taking the time to acknowledge those good moments is such a game changer! It forces you to look for the good, and being able to look back on your lists is seriously the best. I make an effort to write at least one thing every single day. Some days are easier than other but I’ve found that most of the time once I get started writing I just keep thinking of things.

I bought it in the smaller, perfectly purse-sized version so that it’d be easier to always keep around but it does come in a larger version as well.

Like I said before, totally something you could do just as effectively on any old piece of paper but if you’re looking for a special place to start a gratitiude journal, I highly recommend this book! And of course, I definitely recommend taking a few moments each day to just write down some positive things that happened if you’re not doing it already!
xoxo