Have you started a gratitude practice but feel like you aren’t getting anywhere? If so, you may want to check out the following gratitude practice mistakes to see if they are affecting your practice.

In this post, I share four gratitude practice mistakes that have affected my gratitude practice in the past.

Four Gratitude Practice Mistakes That Can Affect Your Daily Practice

If you approach your gratitude practice with an open heart and mind, you are most likely good to go. I have, however, noticed some mistakes when it comes to a gratitude practice (and I’ve made them myself in the past), and I’d be remiss if I didn’t share them with you:

1. Planning out what you are grateful for before experiencing the day.

Have you ever participated in a gratitude challenge and planned out what you are going to write about without even experiencing the day?

The problem with approaching our gratitude practice with preconceived ideas about what we are grateful for is that we limit the possibilities. There is so much possibility in each day, and with an open heart and mind, you never know what could show up that day.

I recommend letting go of any expectations and allowing the day to unfold naturally. Acknowledge and feel that heartfelt appreciation throughout your day as things enter your life or awareness. And journal about your day at the end of the day, after you’ve experienced everything that was in store for you. I wonder what’s possible!

2. Simply listing off the things in your life.

When it comes to your journaling practice, you don’t want just to list off the things in your life. 

First, though we all have so much to be grateful for in our lives, not everyone or everything will have an equally meaningful impact on any given day.

For example, you may be grateful for your friends and family. However, connecting with that heartfelt appreciation may be more challenging if you didn’t speak to them or have any meaningful interactions with them today. 

But let’s say you had a meaningful conversation with a stranger while you were at the store. The conversation may have had a profound impact on you, and, in turn, you’ll find connecting with that heartfelt appreciation easier.

When it comes to a daily gratitude practice, we want to focus on the day at hand and bring in as much of that heartfelt appreciation as we can. I find that the more recent things occur, aka the same day, the easier it is to connect with gratitude. 

Of course, you can still take a moment and think about the people or things you are grateful for in your life overall, but make sure you connect with that heartfelt appreciation when you do. 

Second, when you journal, it’s important to write down the ‘why’ for what you are grateful for that day. Writing down the ‘why’ will bring you back to the moment that the experience occurred. And, as a result, it will assist you with reconnecting with that heartfelt gratitude you felt in that moment. For example, who helped you today? And why was it meaningful to you?

3. Acknowledging what you are grateful for without connecting to your feelings.

A common mistake when it comes to a gratitude practice is to simply acknowledge what we are grateful for and move on. The problem with this is that our practice stays on the intellectual level. 

To integrate it into our experience, we need to connect to gratitude through our feelings.

Now I know it’s not always easy to connect to your feelings. So I created a quick exercise you can do anytime and anywhere you practice gratitude. The purpose of this exercise is to assist you with opening your heart so that you can feel gratitude. 

Watch the video here: How to Feel Gratitude: A quick exercise when practicing gratitude | 1 Minute Insights with Sara Monk

4. Only focusing on the ‘good.’

When it comes to a gratitude practice, there is this tendency to want to focus on only the positive experiences in our lives. But whether something is considered ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ is all just a matter of perspective. 

Every experience, whether we perceive it as positive or negative, is a learning opportunity providing us with a chance to grow.

You may not know why something is happening in the present moment; this realization often comes in hindsight. But there are endless reasons why things happen. 

For example, I found myself triggered the other day while planting a succulent. It wasn’t going into the pot as I wanted, and I felt impatient. Gardening typically brings me joy, so I didn’t know why I suddenly felt all this resistance.

Triggers are useful because they help us become aware of areas in our lives that need healing. We get triggered when something in the moment reminds our subconscious of a past event that we couldn’t process at the time. Triggers let us know that there’s an opportunity to heal now. 

I shifted my perspective by asking myself why I was being triggered, what the trigger was relating to, and what healing opportunity was present for me. 

Upon reflecting, I realized that I used to have this tendency to rush when it came to self-care. I prioritized quickness over taking the time to care for myself lovingly. And even though I’ve done a lot of work in this area and now have loving daily self-care routines, there were still emotions that needed to be processed and released from the past. 

By shifting my perspective, I experienced gratitude for the trigger. I was grateful that the healing opportunity had presented itself.

In every moment, we have the choice to shift our perspective about the situation at hand. Rather than looking at an experience as ‘negative,’ we could choose to see it as a gift yet to be discovered. 

Now practicing gratitude does not replace the need to feel our emotions. All of our emotions are valid, and they need to be felt as they come up. Connecting with gratitude assists us with getting to the other side after we’ve felt our emotions and reconnects us with our hearts.

We can feel our emotions, shift our perspective to one of curiosity, and choose to connect to the energy of gratitude. It’s when we are in alignment with our hearts that it becomes easier to focus on the bigger picture.

So those are four gratitude practice mistakes that have affected my practice in the past. I hope this article assists you with your daily practice.

RELATED: How to Start a Gratitude Practice

With Love,

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Featured Photo by Sara Monk

Discussion Question: Have any of these gratitude practice mistakes affected your practice? Let me know in the conversation below 👇

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