daily gratitude Practice

Duration: The duration of this practice can be anything you wish — you can experiment with a week of gratitude, try a 30-day gratitude challenge, or embark on a year-long gratitude journey.

Parameters: This practice involves identifying at least one thing each day that you are grateful for. You can write this down in a notebook, type this out in a virtual journal, name this aloud, or contemplate this in your mind. This practice is beautifully versatile and forgiving.

Why this challenge? If you’re finding yourself feeling increasingly stressed about little things, big things, and everything in between, it’s probably time to take a pause. This challenge shifts your mindset to look for the good things in your life. The longer you commit to the challenge, the more profound and long lasting the effect.

My experience: I completed this challenge in 2017, and it had a significant effect on my outlook. This was a year-long journey filled with ups and downs. There were days when I couldn’t find anything that I was grateful for, so I’d choose one of my standby items, “I’m grateful for the sun.” There were days when I felt cynical and framed my gratitude as a jab, “I’m grateful I’m not like that.” There were days when I’d forget to type out my gratitude, so I’d have to play catch-up the next day. But over time, I found my mindset slowly starting to shift. I started seeing things all around me that I could be grateful for: the strength of my legs allow me to walk for hours on end, having a dear friend to confide in, having two furbabies who accept me just as I am, the belly laughs with my husband. So many things — some big, most small, all good. By the end of the year, my frame of mind had shifted so much that I no longer needed to continue the daily practice. Now, my gratitude is never not there. It’s lovely to have gratitude as my constant companion.

30 days of Meditation

Duration: This works great as a 30-day or one-month challenge.

Parameters: This challenge involves meditating every day for 30 days or one calendar month. There are a number of options for what time of day to meditate, the length of each meditation session, how many sessions per day, and which technique or app to use. If you’re new to meditation, I suggest starting out with 10 minutes per day, and try out different apps such as Headspace or online meditation resources. I have a small collection of meditations here, and I also recommend Tara Brach’s here. If you have experience with meditation, you can experiment with longer sessions, multiple sessions per day, or different techniques.

Why this challenge? You might have heard a lot in recent years about the numerous benefits of meditation. It seems like everyone meditates, from wellness advocates to executives and business owners. It’s hard to justify taking the time to meditate in a world with so many distractions, so a 30-day challenge is the perfect way to see if this practice is for you.

My experience: I used to be very skeptical about meditation, but I heard so much about the benefits that I decided to do a 30-day challenge in March 2017. While I experienced a calmer state of mind after each meditation session, my practice quickly dropped off once I completed the challenge. I had a hard time finding a technique that resonated with me, so I figured meditation wasn’t for me. A little over a year later, I took a 10-day Vipassana silent meditation course. I realized I hadn’t found the right type of meditation for me. This motivated me to record a series of meditations, which essentially consisted of things I needed to hear at the time. I listen to these on occasion, usually if I’m meditating right before bed. My favourite type of meditation is still silent meditation using the Vipassana technique as taught by Goenkaji.