How practising gratitude can help you through lockdown

For a traditional approach to journaling, write down a few things you are grateful for in a notebook at the end of each day. Photo / Getty Images

With the possibility of a long lockdown looming the simple practice of focusing on the things we are grateful for could be the answer to getting through it, sanity intact.

In the 1960s a New York psychologist named Dr Ira Progoff started teaching the concept of journaling as therapy. In 1978 Progoff released At a Journal Workshop, a book covering his methods and processes for therapeutic journaling. Since then, writing down our thoughts has become widely accepted as a beneficial practice, however many of us don't do it. Why? Time. Who has the time or energy at the end of a busy day to write page upon page about our day?

In keeping with our modern approach to life, which adheres to the philosophy that things should be easy and the gratification immediate, there has been a shift in the approach to journaling in the past decade. Now, rather than rehashing our day line by line we just focus on the good bits, the headlines if you will. Herein lieth the appeal – and efficacy – of gratitude journaling.

Take a minute to review your day so far? Stuck at home in lockdown? Juggling family and work in the messy grey area that is the Covid world? Chances are very good that as you looked back on your day the things that stood out to you were the negatives. The little annoyances, the things that went wrong. The fact that you jumped straight to the negative doesn't make you a dark-hearted pessimist, it just makes you human.

Our brains are actually hard-wired to focus on the negative. This negative habit is a survival instinct bestowed upon us by our caveman ancestors. They were always scanning for danger and expecting the worst, ready to fight or flight – it kept them alive.

We are no longer running from sabre-toothed tigers but life is perilous in different ways. At the moment we are trying to navigate the "new normal" that Covid-19 has thrust upon us. It is hard not to feel like we are in a holding pattern, just hanging in there till life starts again. The longer this pandemic continues, the harder it is to be optimistic. So, if your pep is fading fast, you might benefit from practising a little gratitude.

A 2018 study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology explores how regular gratitude journaling can help rewire our brains towards positive thinking. Findings showed that it led people to feel better about their lives, report fewer physical symptoms, spend more time exercising and feel more optimistic.

The benefits of writing down a few things you are grateful for each day clearly has long term benefits but there is also a hit of instant gratification. The simple art of taking a minute to sit down and make a list of all the things you're grateful for that day or week releases serotonin, the happy chemical in our brain that makes us feel good.

There are many ways to work a little gratitude into your day, none of which take long and one of these ideas requires no writing at all, which means you can include young kids too.

Three easy ways to practise gratitude:

Placing notes of things you are thankful for in a 'smile jar' is a cute, family-friendly way to practice gratitude. Photo / Getty Images

1. The classic approach to gratitude journaling is to keep a notebook and pen by the bed and write down three things you are grateful for each night. If you are not the type to stick to writing in a notepad then simply use a notes app on your smartphone or even dictate a voice memo.

2. An option, which works really well for families wanting to start a gratitude routine together, is the idea of the "smile jar". Each day everyone writes down one thing that made them smile and puts it in the jar, then at the end of the week you read through them together.

3. Another very simple way to practise the art of gratitude was given to me by a child psychologist. She told me that at the dinner table every evening she gets each one of her kids to list three things they are grateful for. That's it, no writing required.

Focusing on the negative is natural, but it is a habit we can break. With the possibility of a long lockdown looming ahead we all need a little help to keep seeing the silver lining.