The Spirt of The Journal
I was writing a blog post on my gratitude journaling system and philosophy called Zero Effort Gratitude.
In Zero Effort Gratitude, the idea of it is to make gratitude journaling easier by changing what gratitude journaling asks of you. It is to make the practice more accepting so you can experience more discovery and practice with awareness and do less appraising and qualifying of what's worthy of being in your journal. (More or less).
While I was writing all about it in detail, extrapolating it down so I could write about and teach it as wholly possible, one phrase I landed on in my description of the systems intent: the spirit of the journal.
The Spirit of the Journal. First of all, that looks wonderful in headline case. It looks like a movie title.
Second, it is a concept that is simple in theory but is often skipped over.
The Spirt of The Journal, as you can imagine, is the intent and purpose of a journaling practice or entry.
In the context of Zero Effort Gratitude Journaling, the spirit of the journaling practice is awareness and acknowledgement of life's gifts.
Gratitude journaling can be needlessly difficult if the goal is to journal only about what qualifies as your current conception of "gratitude". "Gratitude" for some is a grandiose feelings reserved only for events and experiences with heavy emotional and philosophical significance such as
"I'm grateful I woke up this morning".
Not being dead is pretty significant.
Or
"I'm grateful for my family".
The lineage that nurtured you and brought you life is also tremendous and significant.
If you consider the spirit of the gratitude journal, (which is whatever your mission in gratitude is, based on whatever gratitude means to you) then the items you want to include in your entry become priceless and skip the appraisal process completely.