4 Ways to Form an Irresistible Habit
Routines layered with gratitude will reshape your entire life.
The daily routines running our lives often come as a reaction to the needs around us. We are not living intentionally; we simply react to the day based on what serves best in the moment. But in doing so, we become exhausted, bitter, and so anxious we may come to admire the people who run away and never look back.
Instead of allowing life to happen to us, we can cultivate a habit of gratitude so addicting, the world cannot help but bend to our wills.
This is not an insistence on Good Vibes Only, but I can guarantee that if you stick with one of these daily methods of practicing gratitude, you will flourish with a happier life, inside and out. It’s your choice to make; your actions to take.
The Decisions
Forming a daily habit of gratitude requires two internal decisions. You can try to build a gratitude habit without these mindsets, but I don’t recommend it. Why fish by hand when someone offers you a pole?
Decision One
You must choose to be consistent. A flimsy, come-what-may attitude toward your gratitude practice is exactly why you are unable to keep the habit. Personally, I set my gratitude habit at the end of my day. It allows me to reconcile any heavy thoughts or experiences from my day with a reminder that, despite all the hard things I encounter, the beautiful moments still exist. But choose a timeframe that works for you.
Decision Two
You must conclude that your gratitude practice is worthy of your time. There are a lot of needs competing for your attention. Gratitude becomes an easy task to set aside for later, leaving us to miss it all together. But by layering a gratitude practice into a routine you’re already (or need to be) completing during the day, the practice of gratitude becomes a reward for your brain! And whose brain doesn’t want to feel like a winner?
A Winning Routine
Let’s make this simple and create a generic idea of a routine you might hold in the morning, middle of the day, or in the evening. Steal these routines; make them your own. I want to see you flourish!
Morning Routine
- Glass of water, sunscreen/facial moisturizer, vitamins, brush your teeth, go for a walk, stretch, gratitude practice, then consider your daily schedule.
Why this works: Your morning routine is simply waking you up, inside and out. Water, movement, and vitamins are all supporting your physical health. But your mental health needs support too. It may be temping to get the daily scheduling needs out of your brain, but I recommend pushing that temptation behind the gratitude practice. Not only does the gratitude become engrained as necessary, but it allows your soul to rest before diving into the act of supporting the daily activities.
Midday Routine
- Glass of water, stretch your body, eat a nourishing meal, gratitude practice, then find an inspiring quote to encourage the rest of your day.
Why this works: Your midday routine might be really short. But you have to eat. I know you can skip meals, but… why? Your body deserves energy, and your immune system needs all the good stuff it can get through food to support your stressful life. And again, the gratitude practice becomes a precursor to the reward: a good word to keep your heart, mind, and body in alignment throughout the afternoon of work, errands, and family that await.
Evening Routine
- Glass of water, stretch your body, wash your face, pray/meditate, gratitude practice, read, then come back to yourself.
Why this works: By the end of the day, you are in full decision fatigue and ready to crash. If you’ve processed through your day by drinking, slogging through, or even bingeing Law & Order SVU for the seventh time, everything within you needs a reset before bed. A gratitude practice at the end of the day is a powerful method of retraining your brain that invites your thoughts of tomorrow and the dreams ahead of you to take on a more hopeful tone (as well as sending those long term memories off to storage with a smile).
Finding Your Way
There are four easy, memorable ways to form an irresistible habit of gratitude in your life. Once you have made the internal decisions of consistency and valuing your effort, your routine starts to feel like a limb you didn’t know was missing, with gratitude drawing you back each day. Incorporate gratitude into whichever time of day you choose through one of these simple, easy approaches.
Way One
Simply put, stack your gratitude. First, allow yourself to list all the things you are grateful about as they come to mind. No need to sort anything or make sense of it. Just write it out. When the list feels finished (the length will vary day to day), reread the list, pausing for 10–60 seconds on each line item. Meditate upon the object of your gratitude. Bring a small smile to your face, and practice your breath as you read through the list.
Way Two
Similarly to stacking, you can sort the objects of your gratitude into time frames: the past, the present, and the future. Try to limit your items for each time frame to five or less. When you’re finished, approach each object of gratitude with the same 10–60 second pause and time of reflection.
Way Three
The third way is helpful for those choosing a practice in the middle of the day or when their brains are just ready to fall asleep. Simply put, you are going to spontaneously write as many objects of gratitude as come to mind (irrelevant of past, present, or future timing). Write until your brain naturally stops, but get each point down. Although you’re not going to ruminate on each item, you are reminding your body and brain (through the physical act of writing) of the wonderful things in your life.
Way Four
The final way is to incorporate gratitude into your free time routines. These routines are the somewhat thoughtless moments of your day when you’re already reaching for your cellphone. Choose to make them intentional moments instead. Rather than opening a game or Instagram, lean first into any method of making a note.
Whether you draft a tweet, send a text to a friend, or start a voice memo, you are going to record the stream of consciousness for gratitude in the present moment. You might initially have felt annoyed waiting in line at the supermarket. But by choosing gratitude, you realize it is a miracle that you live in a country with accessibility options for fresh food. Reward yourself for this expression of gratitude by allowing yourself a few minutes of mindless scrolling (or whatever else gets your dopamine up).
Personally, I love the “text a friend” option. Sending someone a list of what you’re thankful for in that very moment may trigger their gratitude to become curious, too. #worldchanger
The Resistance
Even if you have a solid routine and are building that daily habit of gratitude, The Resistance can break your stride. When (yes, when) this happens, your role as a gracious human is to soften your resolve and surrender.
While strength and pushback might seem the more appropriate response, the heart that practices a softened stance toward the disrupted routine will become the more consistent practitioner of gratitude. Why?
Because the flexible understand that like gratitude, our life energies ebb and flow. There will be times that our routine is skipped; maybe we’re on vacation or someone is in the hospital. Occasionally breaking our routines is unavoidable, but that doesn’t mean we sacrifice them altogether.
Embracing the Science of Hope
Allowing yourself the grace to fold, soften, and shift your routine while always including gratitude cultivates the very thing you are chasing: a flourishing, happier life. So when a new pressure arises, the practiced routine builder inside of you can bring gratitude to a different time of your day. You have the ability to choose a new way of expressing your gratitude for a time, if needed. You also have the autonomy and hopeful outlook of one who has chosen consistency and valuing your practice of gratitude because you have fostered the growth daily.
The entire purpose of cultivating an irresistible habit of gratitude is to embrace the science of hope. Our goal is to chase the seemingly paradoxical fact that those with a happier, hope-soaked sense of optimism live longer, healthier lives. All the habits included in the routines (movement, increased water consumption, intentionality) lend themselves to a life of better health inside and out. By setting our intention on hope through a daily habit of gratitude, we can pursue the happy, flourishing, healthy life we’ve always wanted.
