These Gratitude Practices Changed My Life
This is for anyone who struggles with a gratitude practice.
Let me guess: you’ve tried gratitude journaling. You dutifully listed three things you’re grateful for. You felt... nothing. Or worse, you felt guilty for feeling nothing. Like you were failing at being grateful, which is somehow even more depressing than just being ungrateful in the first place.
You’re not broken. The practice is.
Where Gratitude Went Wrong
Gratitude journals exploded into mainstream wellness culture in the early 2000s, riding the wave of positive psychology research - particularly Robert Emmons’ work showing that gratitude practices could improve wellbeing. The research was solid. But like most evidence-based practices that get popularized, the nuance got lost in translation.
What we got was a cognitive exercise: List three things. Write them down. Feel better. Except most of us don’t feel better.
We feel like we’re checking off another item on our self-improvement to-do list.
The Real Problem: You’re Asking Your Body to Feel Something It Doesn’t Recognize
Here’s what nobody tells you about gratitude: it’s not a thought. It’s a felt sense in your body - a physical experience of safety, expansion, enoughness.
For people whose nervous systems are wired for threat detection (hello, achievers, perfectionists, anyone who’s experienced trauma), trying to think your way into gratitude is like trying to convince yourself you’re warm while standing in a snowstorm.
Your body knows better.
When your nervous system is in survival mode - scanning for problems, anticipating criticism, bracing for the next thing to go wrong - gratitude doesn’t compute. It can’t. Your body is busy keeping you safe. Asking it to feel grateful while it’s on high alert creates more pressure, not more peace.
The practice becomes another place to fail. Another thing you’re doing wrong.
What Your Body Actually Needs
Real gratitude isn’t something you force yourself to feel. It’s something your nervous system experiences when it feels safe enough to notice what’s good.
You have to teach your body what appreciation actually feels like before you can practice it.
You have to give your nervous system permission to stand down from threat detection and start noticing pleasure, safety, connection.
That’s what these practices do. They’re not gratitude exercises disguised as something else - they’re the foundation that makes gratitude possible.
Five Practices That Actually Work
These are from The Practice, my deck of cards that transforms your negative self-talk into sustaining self-trust:
Find Delight. Eyes open. Find something pleasing to your senses. Extra credit for choosing something ordinary or even “ugly” - notice how light plays on it, its texture, patterns. Close your eyes. How does discovering this register in your body? Warmth? Softness?
Set three alarms today. When they go off, actively look for beauty in something around you - visual, auditory, or even how efficiently something works.
👉 Why it works:
This is gratitude’s gateway. Instead of forcing yourself to feel grateful for abstract things (your health, your family, your opportunities), you’re training your nervous system to notice pleasure in real-time.
Delight is gratitude’s somatic precursor. It creates the body sensation of “this is good” before your mind tries to make meaning of it. When you genuinely find something delightful - light on a coffee mug, the efficiency of a well-designed door hinge - your body experiences expansion, warmth, softness. Those are the same sensations gratitude creates when it’s real, not performed
Your mind spots problems for survival. You can train it to hunt for pleasure instead.
Give Yourself Credit. Hands on heart. Think of something difficult you’ve navigated recently - a challenge overcome, growth achieved, or simply showing up when it was hard. Feel yourself receiving the recognition you deserve. Send yourself love and gratitude.
Today, catch yourself doing something hard - even small things like having a difficult conversation or getting out of bed on a rough day. Pause and say internally: “I see you. Good job.”
👉 Why it works:
Traditional gratitude practices focus outward: I’m grateful for my health, my family, my job. But if you’re someone who doesn’t believe you deserve good things, that gratitude can’t land in your body. It just floats around in your head, theoretical and unconvincing.
This practice turns appreciation inward, which is where most high-achievers have a massive blind spot. You can’t truly feel grateful for what you have if you don’t fundamentally believe you’re worthy of having it.
The hands-on-heart piece is crucial. It signals safety to your nervous system - this is a gesture we use instinctively when we’re moved, when we’re receiving something tender. It tells your body: it’s safe to let this good feeling in. It’s safe to receive.
Add the And. Remember a past situation that felt impossible - a breakup, job loss, crisis. Complete this: “That was painful AND...” What can you see now that you couldn’t then? When you notice either/or thinking today, add an “and.” Challenge yourself to add as many as possible.
👉 Why it works:
This expands gratitude beyond toxic positivity. You’re not denying difficulty or forcing silver linings - you’re training your brain to hold complexity.
“This is hard AND I’m learning” creates more space than “I should just be grateful it’s not worse.” The body responds to “and” with softness, with breathing room. Either/or thinking creates constriction - your nervous system tenses up, bracing for one reality to cancel out the other.
“And” lets both things be true. This is gratitude that doesn’t require you to gaslight yourself about what’s real.
Find the Humanity. Look at something human-made nearby. Imagine all the hands in its creation - designer, factory worker, delivery driver. Feel the chain of human effort that brought this to you. When loneliness or disconnection hits today, touch something human-made and think: “Someone made this for me, even without knowing me.”
👉 Why it works:
This transforms gratitude from an abstract concept to a tangible recognition of interdependence. When you touch something and imagine all the hands that created it, you’re not performing gratitude - you’re experiencing connection.
For people who feel isolated or disconnected, this practice makes appreciation visceral. It’s harder to feel alone when you can physically sense the web of human effort around you. Everything around you is evidence of humans helping humans.
Your nervous system registers connection as safety. And when you feel safe, gratitude becomes possible.
Love Your Blockers. Think of one of your frustrating patterns - procrastination, people-pleasing. These aren’t flaws. They’re protector parts trying to keep you safe. Feel where this pattern lives in your body. Instead of fighting it, flood it with love and gratitude. Thank it for working so hard to protect you. When you catch a frustrating pattern today, say: “Thank you for trying to protect me.” Notice any shifts. Breathe.
👉 Why it works:
This might be the most radical reframe of gratitude. Instead of being grateful despite your “flaws,” you’re appreciating your protective patterns for doing exactly what they were designed to do.
This dissolves shame, which is gratitude’s biggest barrier. You can’t feel genuinely grateful while simultaneously believing you’re broken. The two states can’t coexist in your nervous system.
When you thank your procrastination for protecting you from criticism, something shifts. Your nervous system finally gets permission to relax. You’re not fighting yourself anymore. And that’s when real appreciation becomes possible.
The Point
Gratitude works when it starts in your body, not your head.
These practices aren’t about thinking different thoughts. They’re about training your nervous system to recognize safety, pleasure, enoughness, connection. Once your body knows what those feel like, gratitude stops being a practice you force yourself to do and starts feeling like a natural extension of who you are.
Let me know which gratitude practice resonated most with you! Comment below 👇
Now go get paid.
x Claire
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