Discover what a gratitude challenge is, the benefits of gratitude, and how a gratitude challenge can help you develop an attitude of gratitude!
Regular readers know that I’m all about gratitude! I love sharing gratitude resources, which is why I’m launching an all new gratitude challenge called the Conscious Gratitude Revolution Challenge!
In today’s post, we’ll take a look at gratitude challenges, how they can help you, and what you can expect from this 30 day gratitude challenge!
What is a gratitude challenge?
First off, don’t worry about the word “challenge!” There’s no eating Tide pods or dumping ice on yourself here! We also won’t be doing push-ups or planking, so you’re safe from that type of challenge, too.
A gratitude challenge is simply when you challenge yourself to follow along with gratitude journaling prompts and activities for a period of time. A gratitude challenge can be just a few days or last longer. My favorite is a 30 day gratitude challenge. By the time you’ve practiced conscious gratitude every day for a month, you’re well on the way to establishing your gratitude habit!
A gratitude challenge is a great way to jump-start your gratitude practice. Participating in a challenge alongside other people with prompts that are given to you makes it easier to stay accountable and actually work on developing an attitude of gratitude.
Sitting down with a blank notebook and trying to start a gratitude practice from scratch on your own can be challenging. Participating in a gratitude challenge helps set you up for success!
Why is it so hard to feel grateful?
I’m so glad you asked!
Feeling grateful can be difficult, even when we know we have lots to be grateful for.
I am not a fan of trying to guilt yourself into feeling grateful by telling yourself you “should” be grateful or that “other people have it worse.”
We are all on our own journey and sometimes we end up riding the struggle bus. It’s perfectly natural. Feeling grateful can be difficult, which is why I have an entire post on why it can be hard to feel grateful and what you can do about it!
How an attitude of gratitude benefits you
Science is confirming what many people have known for generations: gratitude is good for you in many ways.
A few of gratitude’s many benefits include:
- Feeling happier (no surprise there!)
- Sleeping better
- Being more satisfied with life
- Having more friends and better relationships
- Greater physical health
- Feeling more optimistic
- Better decision making skills
- Being more patient
How the gratitude challenge works to change your mindset
As anyone who’s tried to develop a new, healthier routine (or stop a bad habit) knows, changing your patterns of thought and behavior can be difficult.
As regular readers may know, I have a Masters in Teaching, so I’ve studied psychology and human growth and development at the graduate level. I am a huge nerd for developmental psychology!
Here’s a simplified look at why breaking old habits and forming new ones can be difficult. When your brain is growing and developing, you form all these connections between neurons. The pathways you use become stronger, but the pathways you don’t use fall away from disuse.
You can think of these neural pathways like a path through an overgrown field. You walk across the field every day, taking the same path. The path becomes more and more worn down while the weeds grow higher in the field. This path is your habitual way of thinking and acting.
When you try to form a new habit, like a gratitude practice, you have to forge a new path across the field.
At first it’s very hard work. It may be sweaty, scratchy, and downright unpleasant! The path barely looks like a path, at all, so the next day it’s super tempting just to take the old, established way. Every time you pick the new trail, it becomes more clear and the old path grows over just a little more. With time, the new path will be firmly established and the old path will just be the ghost of a trail.
As you form new patterns of thought and behavior, your brain makes new connections. Over time, these connections strengthen and grow. This ability of the brain to change and develop over the course of your lifetime is called neuroplasticity. Research has demonstrated that the brain remains plastic, or changeable, even in adulthood! This is different from what a lot of us were taught when we were younger and it’s very exciting news if you want to change your habitual ways of thinking!
The trick is sticking with something new, like a gratitude practice, long enough for form the new neural connections and allow the old, negative, complaining, or generally ungrateful ways of thinking to fall away with disuse.
The 30 day gratitude challenge – welcome to the Conscious Gratitude Revolution!
The key to success is having a defined steps to take along your journey.
You can form the gratitude habit more easily by following a guided gratitude challenge like the Conscious Gratitude Revolution Challenge!
The Conscious Gratitude Revolution Challenge begins on May 1, 2019 with an opening ceremony video and a commitment to practice gratified every day for the next 30 days.
Why “conscious” gratitude?
This challenge teaches you the difference between paying lip service to the idea of gratitude (which won’t really help you) and truly feeling and experiencing gratitude. You’ll learn a special technique for bringing your heart and mind into alignment and amplifying feelings of gratitude.
Benefits of enrolling in the challenge include:
- Daily gratitude journaling prompts remove the ‘blank page paralysis’ and get your brain working on days when finding gratitude is difficult.
- Knowing you’re working alongside others helps hold you accountable.
- Receiving exclusive videos from yoga teachers, wellness coaches, and other experts helps you see how to become resilient and practice gratitude when life throws you a curve ball.
- You’ll also discover some amazing tips for tapping into the wisdom of your heart, avoiding common gratitude practice pitfalls, and get surprise bonus goodies along the way for engaging!
To make sure you don’t miss anything, sign up for the gratitude challenge now!
You don’t want to miss out on this life-changing experience! Use this form to enroll in the gratitude challenge!
I really hope join the challenge! It’s going to be an amazing, powerful experience and I’m so excited to share it with you soon!
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