Choosing Gratitude Has Changed My Life

Expressing gratitude doesn’t require money. It doesn’t require much thought or effort, but it can change our whole outlook on life.

I say this, because I’ve experienced it personally.

Three years ago, I started keeping a Gratitude Journal — a small notebook where I recorded a few blessings from each day. I was going through some health problems at the time and feeling really discouraged and weary from going to doctors, trying various treatments, and not seeing any improvement.

After I began the habit of writing down my blessings each morning, I noticed a marked difference in my attitude — even while struggling with pain and discomfort. I started noticing little blessings that I had taken for granted before. I realized how much I had to be thankful for that I hadn’t been paying attention to because I was so focused on the pain and discomfort.

Truly, the simple practice of writing down my blessings each day transformed my perspective. Instead of focusing on everything that seemed to be going wrong, I started being so grateful for all that was right in my life.

Once my health problems were finally resolved, I had found such benefit in writing down my blessings every day that I decided to continue doing it.

Since I’m all about keeping things simple, I love the concept of a having a journal where there’s just a little space to write in every day. I don’t usually have 15 minutes to journal every day, but I can find a minute or two to write down a few things I’m thankful for.

My mom bought me a journal for two years that was a line-a-day gratitude journal. I loved using it and as I’ve talked about it here on the blog, many of you have asked where you can get one, too.

I started dreaming about the possibility of creating my own gratitude journal — one that was pretty, clean, simple, and inspiring. Soon after this, a company approached us about possibly publishing a journal or gift book for us.

When I had my first phone call with them, I knew exactly what journal I wanted them to help us create — a simple Gratitude Journal! We launched these in 2014 and have loved the response we’ve gotten from so many of you who have used them and been inspired to adopt the daily practice of counting your blessings!

The Choose Gratitude Blessings Journal will inspire you to look for blessings in your every day life. It’s simple (just two lines for every day!) and doable for even the busiest woman.

Each month, there is a theme and each month’s pages have quotes and encouragement to go along with that theme. There are also a few extra pages for journaling or doodling if you’d like to include some extra thoughts or blessings.

You can get one Choose Gratitude Journal for $10, or save when you buy the two-pack of Choose Gratitude Journals for $15 — just $7.50 each!

I also created this Choose Love Mother’s Journal last year to serve as a constant reminder to moms to live and mother out of love — even on the hard and difficult days. Loving our children well not only reflects Christ’s love to them, but it’s a beautiful gift we can give them.

This journal has one line for every day of the calendar year. You can use it to record things you love about being a mom, funny stories or things your kids did or said that day, quick lessons you’re learning as a mom, special memories, or even just blessings.

The Choose Love Journal provides quick and simple way to stop and take time to record things you might otherwise forget to write down. And at the end of the year, it’s such a fun exercise to go back and read over what you’ve written from that year — reminding you of blessings, struggles, and memories shared together.