# Steps — everything we publish > Steps (steps.org) is a journal that texts you first, in iMessage. This file is every > published page in full: TEMPLATES (named ways of keeping a journal, traced to the people > or traditions that kept them, each carrying the prompts worked from that journal and a > note on whose words they are) and ARTICLES about journaling. > > Each page is also available on its own at .md. The index is at > https://steps.org/llms.txt > > Steps makes no scientific claims and cites no studies: the sources here are books, > diaries, letters and interviews. Where a template adapts someone's practice rather than > quoting it, the page says so under "Whose words these are", before the prompts — please > carry that distinction. > Facts current as of 2026-09-02. --- title: "Ryder Carroll's bullet journal reflection" url: "https://steps.org/templates/ryder-carroll-bullet-journal/" type: "journal template" attributed_to: "Ryder Carroll" era: "2018" minutes: "5" updated: "2026-09-02" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Ryder Carroll's bullet journal reflection Ryder Carroll's Bullet Journal is best known for its bullets and migration, but the part that makes it a journal rather than a to-do list is the daily reflection: looking back at yesterday's log and asking what actually still deserves your attention today. ## Whose words these are The Bullet Journal is mostly a NOTATION - rapid logging with bullets for tasks, circles for events, dashes for notes, and monthly migration copied out by hand. None of that survives a text message, and this template does not attempt it. What it takes is the daily reflection Carroll built on top, turned into two questions and asked in the morning only; he does it morning and evening both. If you want the system, you want the notebook and the book. ## The prompts 1. Look back at yesterday. What is still worth your time today, and what quietly stopped mattering? > Carroll's morning review: read the last Daily Log and question what has become irrelevant, or become a priority. 2. Pick the one that matters most today. Why does it matter? > Carroll's intentionality argument - a task you cannot say why you are doing is one to migrate out of your life. ## Whose it is Carroll designed the Bullet Journal and set out the method in his 2018 book. The daily reflection - reviewing the last Daily Log each morning and evening, and asking what has stopped mattering - is his, and it is the part of the system he argues is the point of all the rest. ## Who it suits People who already keep some kind of list and want the reflective half without the ceremony, and anyone whose problem is not remembering what to do but noticing what has quietly stopped being worth doing. ## What it is not for This is not the Bullet Journal. It is one component of it, and a component that assumes the rest exists - Carroll's reflection reads a Daily Log you will not have here. It is also not a productivity system, and if what you actually need is somewhere to keep tasks, a text thread is a poor place to keep them. ## The write-up ## The part everyone copies, and the part that matters The Bullet Journal is famous for its notation - a dot for a task, a circle for an event, a dash for a note - and for migration, the monthly ritual of copying forward by hand whatever is still worth carrying. That copying is deliberately tedious. It is a tax on keeping things, and paying it is how you find out what you did not really want. Underneath that, Carroll asks for a **daily reflection**: read your last log, and question it. What changed? What became irrelevant? What became a priority? That second part is the journal. The bullets are just how it is stored. ## What we took Two questions, morning only. Carroll does it morning and evening; the second one here asks *why* a thing matters, which is his real argument - a task you cannot justify is one to migrate out of your life rather than forward into next month. The notation is not here and cannot be. If the bullets are what you came for, the book is linked above and the system is genuinely better on paper. ## Sources - **Ryder Carroll**, *The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future* (2018) — https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/faq/what-is-the-bullet-journal-method --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/templates/ryder-carroll-bullet-journal/ --- --- title: "Oprah Winfrey's gratitude journal" url: "https://steps.org/templates/oprah-winfrey-gratitude-journal/" type: "journal template" attributed_to: "Oprah Winfrey" era: "1996 onwards" minutes: "5" updated: "2026-09-02" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Oprah Winfrey's gratitude journal A gratitude journal is the simplest reflective practice there is: write down what you are grateful for, in your own words, regularly. Oprah Winfrey kept one daily for about a decade — five things a day — and says plainly that it fell away when her schedule got the better of her. ## Whose words these are Oprah wrote five things; Steps asks two questions instead. That is our shape, not hers — one about today and one about your life more widely, because the second is what stops the first shrinking to weather and coffee. The questions themselves are ours. The practice is hers, and a great many other people's. ## The prompts 1. What are you grateful for today? > The day in front of you. Deliberately open, deliberately small-friendly. 2. What are you grateful for in life? > Wider than today. This is the one that stops the practice becoming a list of nice weather. ## Whose it is Oprah has described the practice and its ending in her own words, on the record, for years: five things a day beginning in 1996, kept up for about a decade, then slipping as life got busier. One surviving entry from October 1996 lists a run in a breeze, cold melon on a bench, a phone call with a friend, a sorbet, and Maya Angelou ringing to read her a new poem. ## Who it suits Anyone starting from nothing. It is the most forgiving practice here — two open questions, no technique to learn, and a thin answer is still an answer. ## What it is not for Gratitude journaling turns into performance if you let it — writing what sounds grateful rather than what is true. If you catch yourself composing, the second question is usually the way out. And on a genuinely bad day, forcing it is how people come to resent the practice and stop. ## The write-up ## A practice, and how it ended Oprah Winfrey kept a gratitude journal every day for about ten years. Five things, written down. One entry that survives, from October 1996: a run in a slight breeze, cold melon on a bench in the sun, a phone call with a friend about a blind date, a sorbet in a cone, and Maya Angelou ringing up to read her a new poem. Ordinary things. That is the practice working, not failing. ## Then it slipped She has said plainly what happened next: life got busier and the daily writing fell away. That is the most useful sentence on this page, and it is why the practice is worth having a system for. People almost never stop journaling because they decided it was worthless. They stop because a Tuesday got in the way, and then another one did. ## The two questions **What are you grateful for today?** is the easy one, and left alone it shrinks — coffee, weather, a good night's sleep. All true, all getting smaller. **What are you grateful for in life?** is the counterweight. It is wider than a day and it does not renew every morning, so answering it takes actual thought. It is the one people skip and the one doing the work. ## Sources - **Oprah Winfrey**, *Oprah's Gratitude Journal* (1996 onwards) — https://www.oprah.com/spirit/oprahs-gratitude-journal-oprah-on-gratitude - **Robert A. Emmons**, *Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier* (2007) — https://www.harpercollins.com/products/thanks-robert-emmons --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/templates/oprah-winfrey-gratitude-journal/ --- --- title: "Marcus Aurelius' journaling prompts" url: "https://steps.org/templates/marcus-aurelius-journaling-prompts/" type: "journal template" attributed_to: "Marcus Aurelius" era: "c. 170-180 CE" minutes: "5" updated: "2026-09-02" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Marcus Aurelius' journaling prompts Marcus Aurelius began the day by rehearsing it rather than reviewing it: naming the difficult people he expected to meet, and reminding himself what the day's work actually was. It is a bracing practice, not a comforting one, and it takes about five minutes. ## Whose words these are Marcus Aurelius never published a list of questions. He wrote reflections to himself, and these two prompts are ours, written to do the job his morning passages were doing — rehearsing the day's difficulty, and naming the day's work. The framing is his; the sentences are not, and nothing here should be read as a quotation. ## The prompts 1. Who are you likely to find difficult today, and what will you do when they are? > From Meditations II.1, where he lists the kinds of people the day will bring and reminds himself they cannot implicate him in ugliness. 2. What is the work in front of you today that is actually yours to do? > From Meditations V.1, the argument against staying in bed: he is getting up to do the work of a human being. ## Whose it is The Meditations are his private notebooks, written in Greek while on campaign and never intended for publication. Books II and V open with the two morning passages this template is built from — the difficult people of II.1, and the getting-out-of-bed argument of V.1. ## Who it suits People who would rather walk into a hard day having already pictured it than be surprised by it, and who want something short and unsentimental rather than a page of feelings. ## What it is not for This is a rehearsal, not a comfort. It braces you for a day rather than helping you sit with one, and it is a poor fit for grief, crisis, or anything that needs gentleness. If naming difficult people in advance makes you dread the day rather than meet it, this is the wrong practice and you should stop. ## The write-up ## What he actually did Marcus Aurelius wrote the *Meditations* to himself, in Greek, mostly on campaign. They were not published in his lifetime and were never meant to be read. Two of them open with the morning. Book II begins: when you wake, tell yourself that the people you deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly — and that none of them can implicate you in ugliness. Book V begins with the argument against staying in bed: that he is getting up to do the work of a human being, which is what he was made for. Neither is a question. Both are rehearsals. ## Why the morning and not the evening Stoicism is better known for its evening review — sitting with the day after it is over and asking what went wrong. That practice is **Seneca's**, not Marcus Aurelius', and Seneca himself credits it to Sextius before him. It is a different template and it belongs to a different person. What Marcus documented is the other end of the day. He is not settling accounts; he is getting ready. ## The practice Two questions, once each, five minutes. The first names the friction you expect. The second names the work you are actually for. Neither asks how you feel, and that is deliberate — this is a practice for people who find it easier to start a hard day having already looked at it. If you want the softer end of the tradition, this is not it. ## Sources - **Marcus Aurelius, trans. Gregory Hays**, *Meditations: A New Translation* (c. 170-180 CE) — Book II, 1 and Book V, 1 --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/templates/marcus-aurelius-journaling-prompts/ --- --- title: "Julia Cameron's morning pages" url: "https://steps.org/templates/julia-cameron-morning-pages/" type: "journal template" attributed_to: "Julia Cameron" era: "1992, and daily since" minutes: "20" updated: "2026-09-02" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Julia Cameron's morning pages Morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, done first thing in the morning, about whatever is in your head. There is no prompt and no subject. Julia Cameron's whole point is that you write past the interesting part and keep going until the pages are full. ## Whose words these are This is the loosest adaptation in the directory and you should know exactly what it drops. Cameron's morning pages are THREE PAGES, LONGHAND, by hand, with no prompt at all - and she is emphatic about all three. A text thread cannot do longhand, cannot count pages, and cannot offer nothing at all without looking broken. What survives is the shape: first thing, no subject, keep going. Steps takes up to three answers to it, which is the closest this shape comes to 'three pages'. If you want the real practice you need a notebook and a pen, and this page will not pretend otherwise. ## The prompts 1. Whatever is on your mind right now - start there, and keep going until you run out. > Deliberately not a question. Cameron's practice has no prompt; this exists only to open the page and get out of the way. ## Whose it is Cameron sets out morning pages in the first chapter of The Artist's Way, published in 1992 and continuously in print since. She has taught them as the non-negotiable half of the course for thirty years, in her own words and under her own name. ## Who it suits People who feel jammed rather than short of ideas, and who write better with nothing in front of them than with a question to answer. ## What it is not for It is not for people who need a way in. A blank prompt is a blank page by another name, and if staring at one is the reason you stopped journaling, one of the question-shaped templates will serve you far better. It is also not a record you will want to reread - Cameron tells you not to. ## The write-up ## What she actually asks for Three pages. Longhand. First thing in the morning. About anything. Cameron is unusually strict about the specifics, and each one is doing work. **Longhand**, because typing is fast enough to let you be clever. **Three pages**, because the useful material arrives after the material you meant to write. **First thing**, before the day has given you anything to perform about. And **no prompt**, because a prompt is a topic, and a topic is a way of avoiding whatever you would have written instead. She also tells you not to reread them. They are not a record. They are a drain. ## What a text thread can and cannot do It cannot do longhand, and it cannot count pages. Those are two of her three specifics, and losing them is not a detail. What it can do is the shape - first thing, no subject, keep going - and it can do the one thing a notebook cannot, which is turn up on its own. If the reason your morning pages stopped is that the notebook was in the other room, that is the trade this makes. If the reason they stopped is that you did not want to write three pages, this will not fix that, and it is not supposed to. ## Sources - **Julia Cameron**, *The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity* (1992) — https://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/ --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/templates/julia-cameron-morning-pages/ --- --- title: "James Pennebaker's expressive writing" url: "https://steps.org/templates/james-pennebaker-expressive-writing/" type: "journal template" attributed_to: "James W. Pennebaker" era: "1986, and studied ever since" minutes: "20" updated: "2026-09-02" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # James Pennebaker's expressive writing Expressive writing is fifteen to twenty minutes of continuous writing about your deepest thoughts and feelings on a single difficult experience, repeated on four consecutive days and then stopped. James Pennebaker devised it in the 1980s and has written about it ever since. ## Whose words these are Two changes, and the first matters most. Pennebaker's method is a COURSE, not a habit: four consecutive days on the SAME subject, then stop. A prompt arriving every morning forever is a different thing. If you use this, use it for four days on one subject and then switch back. Second, his sessions were in the evening; this asks in the morning. The wording below is close to his instruction rather than exactly it — his full version invites you to tie the experience to your childhood, your relationships, and who you want to become. ## The prompts 1. Write your deepest thoughts and feelings about the thing weighing on you. Don't stop to tidy it up. > Pennebaker's standard instruction, shortened. His asks you to 'really let go and explore your very deepest emotions and thoughts' about the experience, and says spelling and grammar do not matter. ## Whose it is Pennebaker designed the protocol and ran the first trials at Southern Methodist University in the mid-1980s. The instruction below is his, closely paraphrased from the standard wording used across the studies and reproduced in Opening Up by Writing It Down, the book he wrote with Joshua Smyth. ## Who it suits People carrying one specific difficult thing they have never written down, who want to put it into words once, properly, rather than return to it every morning. ## What it is not for This is the one method here that can genuinely upset you, and it is meant to be hard — Pennebaker is candid that people often feel worse immediately afterwards. It is not therapy and it is not a treatment. In the middle of a crisis, or with something you are not already supported around, please talk to a person rather than a text thread. See steps.org/safety. It is also not a daily habit, however easy it is to turn it into one. ## The write-up ## What he actually asks for Fifteen to twenty minutes. Four days running. The same difficult subject each time. Write continuously, and do not stop to fix the spelling. Pennebaker's instruction is to really let go and explore your very deepest thoughts and feelings about the experience — and he invites you to tie it to the rest of your life: your childhood, your relationships, who you were, who you would like to become. That is the whole method. There is no chart, no streak, and nothing to keep. ## A course, not a habit The thing most often lost when this gets turned into an app is that it was never meant to be daily and forever. Four days, one subject, then stop. Use it as four mornings on one thing. Then go back to whatever you were doing. ## Be careful with this one Pennebaker says plainly that people often feel worse straight afterwards. That is not a sign you are doing it wrong, and it is also a real reason not to start it in the middle of something you are barely holding. Nothing here is treatment. If that is where you are, talk to a person. ## Sources - **James W. Pennebaker and Joshua M. Smyth**, *Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain* (2016 (third edition)) — https://www.guilford.com/books/Opening-Up-by-Writing-It-Down/Pennebaker-Smyth/9781462524921 --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/templates/james-pennebaker-expressive-writing/ --- --- title: "The Ignatian examen" url: "https://steps.org/templates/ignatian-examen-journaling-prompts/" type: "journal template" attributed_to: "the Ignatian tradition" era: "1548, and daily since" minutes: "10" updated: "2026-09-02" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # The Ignatian examen The examen is a five-point review of the day that Ignatius of Loyola set out in the Spiritual Exercises: give thanks, ask for light, walk back through the hours, face what went wrong, and resolve what to do next. Jesuits have kept it daily for nearly five hundred years. ## Whose words these are This is an adaptation and the differences are not small. The examen is a PRAYER: its five points are addressed to God, and two of them - asking grace to know one's sins, and asking pardon for them - have no version here that would not be a hollow imitation, so they are left out rather than emptied. What remains keeps the shape of the other three: thanks, the walk back through the hours, the resolution. It is also traditionally kept at midday and again in the evening; Steps asks in the morning, so it looks back at yesterday. If you are Catholic or Ignatian, keep the real one - this is not a replacement for it. ## The prompts 1. What are you grateful for from yesterday? > The first point: give thanks for the benefits received. In the original this is thanks given to God. 2. Walk back through yesterday. Where did it turn - for better or worse? > The third point: to ask account of the day, hour by hour - first thoughts, then words, then acts. 3. What will you do differently today? > The fifth point: to purpose amendment. In the original, with grace. ## Whose it is Ignatius sets out the five points in the General Examination of Conscience in the Spiritual Exercises, completed around 1548. It has been kept daily in Jesuit practice ever since, and is still taught that way by Jesuit institutions today. ## Who it suits People who want a structured look back rather than a blank page, and who like a review that starts with what was good before it gets to what was not. It carries well for anyone drawn to the shape of the tradition, whether or not they share its faith. ## What it is not for Two warnings. If you are practising the examen as prayer, use the real five points and not this - what is missing here is precisely the part that makes it prayer. And the walk back through the hours can turn into rumination for anyone inclined to it: the tradition pairs it with pardon and resolution for a reason, and without them a nightly audit of your own faults is a different and worse thing. ## The write-up ## What it actually is The examen is a prayer. Ignatius of Loyola set it out in the *Spiritual Exercises* around 1548, as five points: 1. Give thanks to God for the benefits received. 2. Ask grace to know one's sins and cast them out. 3. Ask account of the day, hour by hour - first thoughts, then words, then acts. 4. Ask pardon for the faults. 5. Purpose amendment, with grace. Jesuits have kept it daily for nearly five hundred years, traditionally twice: once around midday and once in the evening. It is probably the most continuously practised daily review in the Western world, and it predates every journaling app by four and a half centuries. ## What we kept, and what we did not Three of the five points survive here: the thanks, the walk back through the hours, the resolution. Two do not. Asking grace to know your sins, and asking pardon for them, are addressed to God, and there is no secular version of them that is not a hollow imitation. Leaving them out is more honest than emptying them. So this is the examen's **shape**, not the examen. If you are Ignatian, or Catholic, or simply want the thing itself, keep the real five points - they are linked above, in Ignatius' own words. ## The order matters Gratitude comes first, and not by accident. The walk back through a day is a great deal easier to do honestly when it starts from what was good, and a great deal more corrosive when it does not. The tradition puts thanks at the front and resolution at the back, with the hard part in the middle where it is held on both sides. Keep that order. It is the part most modern versions drop, and it is the part doing the work. ## Sources - **St. Ignatius of Loyola**, *The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola* (c. 1548) — https://www.ccel.org/ccel/ignatius/exercises.xii.iii.html - **Xavier University Jesuit Resource**, *The Examen* (n.d., accessed 2026) — https://www.xavier.edu/jesuitresource/ignatian-resources/examen --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/templates/ignatian-examen-journaling-prompts/ --- --- title: "Benjamin Franklin's journaling prompts" url: "https://steps.org/templates/benjamin-franklin-journaling-prompts/" type: "journal template" attributed_to: "Benjamin Franklin" era: "the practice from 1726; the Autobiography written 1771-1790" minutes: "5" updated: "2026-09-02" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Benjamin Franklin's journaling prompts Benjamin Franklin opened each day by asking what good he would do, and closed it by asking what good he had done — his own words, written into the daily schedule he called the Scheme. This template keeps the morning question verbatim and asks the evening one the next morning, about yesterday. ## Whose words these are Franklin asked his second question at eight in the evening: 'What Good have I done to day?'. Steps only asks in the morning, so here it looks back at yesterday instead. That is a real change and it costs something — Franklin was settling a day he could still remember hour by hour, where you are settling one a night's sleep away. What it gains is distance: yesterday is finished, and easier to be honest about than an evening still going on. ## The prompts 1. What good shall I do this day? > Franklin's own words, from the five o'clock line of the Scheme. Capitalisation modernised; nothing else touched. 2. What good did you do yesterday? > Franklin's eight o'clock question, moved to the morning and turned to look back a day. See the note above the prompts. ## Whose it is Franklin sets out the practice in Part 2 of his Autobiography, inside the daily timetable he called the Scheme. The morning question sits at five o'clock and the evening question at eight, printed in the table itself — these are his sentences, not a later summary of them. ## Who it suits People who want a day to have a shape — something declared at the start and accounted for at the end — and who would rather answer a plain question than write freely about how things went. ## What it is not for It is a ledger, and ledgers can turn into scorekeeping. Franklin himself gave up on the timetable, admitting the Scheme suited a journeyman printer more than a man who had to meet people at their hours. If asking what good you did starts producing a list of failures rather than a record of a day, this practice has stopped working and it is worth stopping too. ## The write-up ## What he actually did In Part 2 of the Autobiography, Franklin prints his daily timetable — the Scheme. It runs hour by hour, and two of its lines are questions he asked himself. At five in the morning: **What good shall I do this day?** At eight at night: **What Good have I done to day?** They are not rhetorical. They bracket the working day, and they sit alongside the thirteen virtues and the chart he marked each night — the part of the practice most people remember, and the part he was least successful at keeping. ## The honest part Franklin gave up on the Scheme. He says so plainly: the order it demanded might be practicable for a journeyman printer, but not for a man who had to receive people of business at their own hours. He kept the questions and lost the timetable. That is worth knowing before you start. The questions are the durable half. ## What we changed Steps asks in the morning only, so the evening question here looks back at yesterday rather than at the day just ending. Franklin had the day fresh; you have it finished. He was settling accounts he could still feel; you are reading them a night later, which is harder to fudge and easier to be fair about. If you want his version, ask the second one at eight at night, on paper, the way he did. ## Sources - **Benjamin Franklin**, *The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin* (written 1771-1790) — https://ushistory.org/historic-personages/franklin/autobiography/page40.htm --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/templates/benjamin-franklin-journaling-prompts/ --- --- title: "What Is Gratitude?" url: "https://steps.org/articles/what-is-gratitude/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Gratitude, defined" updated: "2026-09-01" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # What Is Gratitude? Gratitude is what you feel when you notice that something good in your life came from outside you, and that somebody put it there. The important word is outside: being pleased with your life is contentment, while noticing you did not produce it alone is gratitude. Biologists describe it as the felt record of a favour received — which is why it so often arrives feeling less like a glow and more like a debt. **Gratitude is what you feel when you notice that something good in your life came from outside you — and that somebody, or something, put it there.** That is the whole definition, and the important word in it is *outside*. Being pleased with your life is contentment. Noticing that you did not produce it alone is gratitude. Most pages that answer this question stop at the definition. The more interesting question is where the feeling came from in the first place, and why it arrives — as it so often does — feeling less like a warm glow and more like a debt. ## Where gratitude comes from Gratitude has an origin story, and it is not a spiritual one. It is about animals that had to trust each other. In 1971 Robert Trivers asked how natural selection could favour an animal that helps another at a cost to itself, with no guarantee of repayment. His answer — reciprocal altruism — works when the same individuals meet repeatedly, recognise each other, and can tell a reciprocator from a cheat. But a system like that needs bookkeeping. Trivers listed the emotions that do it: friendship, moralistic aggression, guilt, sympathy, trust, suspicion, trustworthiness — and **gratitude**. On his account gratitude is the felt record that somebody extended you credit. Martin Nowak and Sébastien Roch later modelled a stranger case: **paying it forward.** Somebody helps you, and you then help a completely different person who did nothing for you. Their model found this cannot survive on its own, but spreads readily once ordinary give-and-take is established — and they describe it, memorably, as *a misdirected act of gratitude*. You are left holding the feeling of owing something and you discharge it on whoever is in front of you. These are theoretical models, not measurements of anyone's feelings, and an account of why an emotion exists says nothing about whether practising it helps. But they explain something a definition alone cannot. ## Why it feels like a debt Because on this account, it partly is one. That is worth knowing if gratitude has ever felt uncomfortable to you — if being given something arrives with a faint obligation attached rather than pure warmth. That reaction is not ingratitude. It is the machinery working as described. It also explains why gratitude is so much easier to feel toward people than toward circumstances. Thanking the weather is odd. Thanking your sister is not. ## What makes gratitude a moral emotion McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons and Larson made the case that gratitude belongs with empathy and guilt as a **moral** emotion — one that tracks what other people do on purpose. They give it three jobs: 1. **A moral barometer.** It registers that someone deliberately did you good. 2. **A moral motive.** It makes you more likely to behave well in return, and toward others. 3. **A moral reinforcer.** Expressed out loud, it makes the person who helped you more likely to do it again. The third one is the one people skip. Gratitude kept entirely to yourself does two-thirds of its work. Saying it changes the other person. This is a framework proposed for testing rather than a demonstrated mechanism — but it is the clearest available answer to why gratitude feels different from mere satisfaction. ## Why some people find this so much easier than you do Some of how grateful you are came with you. Steger and colleagues ran a twin study across the 24 character strengths and found genetic and non-shared environmental effects accounted for the differences in 21 of them. Gratitude is one of the 21. Only teamwork, humility and humour showed no significant genetic contribution. Read that carefully, because it is easy to misread in both directions. Heritability describes variation across a population — it is not a ceiling on any individual, and highly heritable traits respond to practice all the time. The sample was 336 middle-aged American twins. What it does license is a gentler framing. If gratitude comes harder to you than to the relentlessly appreciative person in your life, that is a starting position, not a character defect. ## A note on "gratitude rewires your brain" You will meet that phrase constantly. This page is not going to use it. There is real work on the biological side, and the Greater Good Science Center's 2018 survey of the field is the best free place to start on it. But *rewires your brain* is doing far more work than any individual study claims for itself, and a directory that repeats it has stopped reporting and started selling. If you want the biology, go to the survey, then go to the studies it cites. That is the honest route, and it is slower than the phrase. ## So does it actually work? Briefly, because this page is about what gratitude *is*. Yes — and the honest version is more interesting than either the boosters or the sceptics will tell you. The largest experiment ever run on this randomly assigned **10,696 people across 34 countries** to one of six gratitude practices or one of three control tasks. Gratitude moved every outcome it was supposed to move. The biggest was **positive affect — how good the day feels — at d = 0.37.** Optimism followed at 0.24. Envy went down. Life satisfaction moved least, at 0.12. **That ordering is the finding.** Gratitude is reliably good at changing how a day feels, and much weaker at changing what you conclude about your life as a whole. The figure most often quoted — a small overall effect on wellbeing, pooled from 145 papers and 24,804 people — averages those two very different things together and reports the middle. Which is how a practice that is genuinely good at one thing ends up described as mildly good at everything. Two limits travel with that, and they are the authors' own. Outcomes were measured immediately after a twenty-minute session, so this shows gratitude can shift how you feel — not how long the shift lasts. And effects varied more between countries than between practices; the paper states plainly that an intervention deployed in a newly chosen country can be expected to improve positive affect **but not the other outcomes measured.** Anyone promising more than that is promising more than the evidence. But *"it reliably improves how the day feels, and we are less certain about the rest"* is both fair and a good deal more useful than either "proven to make you happier" or a shrug. ## The form seems to matter One detail worth carrying away, because it is the difference between a practice that works and one that goes flat. Simply counting your blessings produces small improvements. The research suggests those effects **roughly double when you also imagine life without the thing you are grateful for.** It is the difference between *"I'm glad I have my sister"* and actually picturing the version of your life where she is not in it. The second is uncomfortable in a way the first is not — and that discomfort appears to be where the effect lives. ## What gratitude is not - **It is not contentment.** You can be satisfied with your life and grateful to nobody. - **It is not appreciation.** Appreciation needs no giver — you can appreciate a piece of music. Gratitude wants someone who acted. - **It is not positive thinking.** Nothing here requires believing things are better than they are. Noticing what actually arrived is the opposite of that. - **It is not a treatment.** Gratitude is not a substitute for care when something is genuinely wrong. Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk who has spent a life on this, puts the practical version as a reversal: not that happy people are grateful, but that grateful people become happy. He is arguing a case, not reporting data — but he is arguing it in the direction the research points, which is that the practice comes first and the feeling follows. --- For the vocabulary — how gratitude differs from thankfulness and appreciation — see [gratitude vs thankfulness](/articles/gratitude-vs-thankfulness/). For what the evidence supports, see [the benefits of gratitude journaling](/articles/benefits-of-gratitude-journaling/). For how the traditions frame it, see [gratitude in world religions](/articles/gratitude-in-world-religions/). And to actually begin, [how to start a gratitude journal](/articles/how-to-start-a-gratitude-journal/). ## Sources - **Summer Allen, Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley**, *The Science of Gratitude (white paper prepared for the John Templeton Foundation)* (2018) — https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/GGSC-JTF_White_Paper-Gratitude-FINAL.pdf - **Robert A. Emmons**, *Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier* (2007) — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1685992.Thanks_ - **Br. David Steindl-Rast**, *Want to be happy? Be grateful - David Steindl-Rast at TEDGlobal 2013* (2013) — https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/what-is-gratitude/ --- --- title: "Gratitude vs Thankfulness: What the Difference Actually Is" url: "https://steps.org/articles/gratitude-vs-thankfulness/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Gratitude, defined" updated: "2026-09-01" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Gratitude vs Thankfulness: What the Difference Actually Is In everyday English, gratitude and thankfulness mean almost the same thing — and most of the confident distinctions online contradict each other. The real difference comes from two places that had to be precise: psychology, which treats gratitude as a measurable standing disposition and thankfulness as a response to a particular thing, and the older religious vocabulary, where thanks was a verb before it was a feeling. **Short answer: in everyday English they mean almost the same thing, and most of the confident distinctions you will read online were invented on the spot.** That is worth saying first, because this question attracts a lot of tidy answers that contradict each other. One popular page says thankfulness is an emotion and gratitude is an attitude. Another says thankfulness is an adjective and gratitude is a noun — which is not even true; *thankfulness* is a noun. A third says gratitude is general and thankfulness is specific. A fourth reverses it. They cannot all be right, and none of them cites anything. There *is* a real distinction. It just is not the one being guessed at, and it comes from the two places that have actually done the work: the research literature, which had to define gratitude precisely enough to measure it, and the older religious vocabulary, which had separate words for separate things long before psychology existed. ## In ordinary use, the words overlap almost completely If you say "I'm thankful for my sister" and "I'm grateful for my sister", you have said the same thing. No dictionary, and no usage evidence, separates them cleanly. So if you came here worried you have been using the wrong word: you have not. Nothing below is a correction. What follows is more interesting than a rule — it is what happens when people who needed the distinction went and made one. ## What psychology means by gratitude: a disposition you can measure When researchers began studying gratitude seriously they had a practical problem. To ask whether grateful people are happier, you need to say what makes one person more grateful than another. McCullough, Emmons and Tsang answered it with four dimensions: - **Intensity** — how strongly you feel it when something good happens. - **Frequency** — how often it turns up at all. - **Span** — how many areas of life produce it. Work, health, family, an ordinary Tuesday. - **Density** — how many *people* you feel grateful to for any single good thing. That last one separates two people who are equally pleased about the same promotion: one names a mentor, a partner and two colleagues, the other names nobody. Notice what this describes. Not a feeling — **a standing tendency**. In this sense gratitude is closer to a trait than to a mood, and thankfulness is what it looks like on a particular Tuesday when something particular has happened. That is the sharpest defensible version of the distinction: **thankfulness is a response, gratitude is a disposition.** And it is a distinction psychologists made for their own purposes, not a rule of English. ## What makes gratitude a moral emotion There is a second and better distinction hiding underneath, and it explains why the words feel different even when they are interchangeable. You can be thankful *that* something is the case. Thankful the rain held off. Thankful the results came back clear. Gratitude, in the sense McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons and Larson describe, points at **somebody**. They argue it belongs to the family of moral emotions, alongside empathy and guilt, and give it three jobs: it registers that another person deliberately did you good, it makes you more likely to behave well in return and toward others, and — when you say it out loud — it makes the person who helped you more likely to help again. This is why "I'm grateful to the weather" sounds wrong and "I'm thankful the weather held" does not. Gratitude has a direction. It wants an object with intentions. It is also why gratitude kept privately does only part of its work. The third function needs expression to happen at all. ## The traditions had separate words, and they were not synonyms Long before anyone measured this, the religious vocabularies were already careful here — and they split it differently again. In the Hebrew Bible the relevant word is **todah**. As Robert Alter's translation and commentary make plain, todah is the thanksgiving offering behind many of the Psalms: something ancient Israel did with its body and its goods, not only with its feelings. Thanks was an act you performed, not a state you were in. In New Testament Greek the everyday word is **eucharisteo**, "to give thanks" — the ordinary term, as the standard lexicon records, from which the church's central meal, the Eucharist, takes its name. Both are verbs before they are feelings. That is the pattern worth carrying away: the older vocabulary treats thanks as **something you do**, and the modern one treats gratitude as something you are or have. Neither is wrong. They are answering different questions. *A note on scope: describing what these words meant is lexical and literary scholarship, not a claim about doctrine, and traditions differ among themselves on all of this.* ## What about appreciation? Appreciation is the third word people ask about, and it is the easiest. Appreciation does not require a giver. You can appreciate a piece of music, a well-made chair, a clear morning — noticing the value of a thing, with nobody to thank. Gratitude, on the moral-emotion account, needs someone who acted. Which makes appreciation the wider word and gratitude the more demanding one. You can appreciate everything you have and still not be grateful to anyone for any of it. ## Does the distinction change what you should actually do? A little, and in one specific way. The experiments that produced the well-known effects did not ask people to *feel* more grateful. Emmons and McCullough asked participants to **list** things — weekly or daily — and the people listing what they were grateful for reported higher well-being than those listing hassles or neutral events, with the effect on positive affect the most reliable result. It is a modest, short-duration finding, and it is an instruction to write rather than to feel. So the practical reading of all this is not "cultivate the correct inner state." It is closer to what both the researchers and the older traditions arrived at independently: **thanks is a thing you do.** Write the list. Say it to the person. Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, puts the same point as a reversal in his TED talk — not that happy people are grateful, but that grateful people become happy. He is arguing a case rather than reporting data. But he is arguing it in the same direction the evidence points: start with the practice, not with the feeling. ## The short version - In ordinary English, **gratitude and thankfulness mean the same thing**, and you have not been using them wrong. - Where research needed a distinction, it made one: **thankfulness is a response to something, gratitude is a standing disposition** with intensity, frequency, span and density. - Where the difference bites hardest: **gratitude points at a person.** Thankfulness can point at a situation. - **Appreciation is wider than both** and needs no giver at all. - The traditions treated thanks as **an action** — todah, eucharisteo — and the research effectively agrees, because what it measured was people writing lists. --- If you want the practice rather than the vocabulary, [how to start a gratitude journal](/articles/how-to-start-a-gratitude-journal/) covers the mechanics. For how different traditions frame the same practice, see [gratitude in world religions](/articles/gratitude-in-world-religions/) and [gratitude in the Bible](/articles/gratitude-in-the-bible/). ## Sources - **Robert Alter**, *The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary* (2018) — https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393292497 - **Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (eds.), abridged by Geoffrey W. Bromiley**, *Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume* (1985) — https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802824042/theological-dictionary-of-the-new-testament/ - **Br. David Steindl-Rast**, *Want to be happy? Be grateful - David Steindl-Rast at TEDGlobal 2013* (2013) — https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/gratitude-vs-thankfulness/ --- --- title: "Comparison Is the Thief of Joy" url: "https://steps.org/articles/comparison-is-the-thief-of-joy/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Gratitude and comparison" updated: "2026-09-01" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Comparison Is the Thief of Joy Comparison really does steal joy, but the fix is not to stop noticing what other people have — almost nobody manages that for long. Gratitude is the best-studied alternative, and the research points somewhere more interesting than "stop comparing": grateful people report more of the envy that makes them want to rise, and less of the envy that makes them want someone else to fall. **Somebody has more than you. They always will. The question the quote never answers is what you are supposed to do about it.** "Comparison is the thief of joy" is one of those lines that sounds like it settles something. It does not. It names a feeling everybody recognises and then leaves you holding it, because the advice hiding inside it — *stop comparing yourself to other people* — is advice almost nobody can follow for more than an afternoon. There is a better answer, and it is older and stranger than the quote. ## Nobody knows who said it Not Theodore Roosevelt, who gets the credit on most of the internet. Not Mark Twain. Not C. S. Lewis. Quote Investigator followed the paper trail. The earliest close relative is John Powell in 1989 — "comparison is the death of true self-contentment." Ray Cummings writes "a third thief of joy is comparison" in 2003. By 2004 the phrase appears in its familiar form, printed by an author who explicitly declines to take credit for it. The famous names show up afterwards, one at a time: Dwight Edwards in 2010, C. S. Lewis in 2011, Roosevelt in 2012, Twain in 2013. Quote Investigator's verdict is that there is **no substantive evidence** for any of them. This is not a gotcha. It is the first honest thing anyone can tell you about the sentence: it is folk wisdom that acquired a president. Which means it is worth exactly what it can be shown to be worth, and nothing extra borrowed from a great man's name. ## The quote is right about the feeling and wrong about the cure Take the advice literally and it asks you to stop noticing. You cannot. Noticing where you stand relative to other people is not a bad habit you picked up from your phone; it is closer to how the machinery works. So "stop comparing" fails the way most instructions to stop feeling something fail. You manage it for a morning, catch yourself doing it again by lunch, and add a layer of guilt on top of the envy you already had. The useful question is not how to stop noticing. It is **what else you could be doing with your attention** — and gratitude is the most studied answer to that question. ## What steals gratitude has three names Gratitude has specific competitors, not vague ones. Solom, Watkins, McCurrach and Scheibe went looking for them: they measured four suspected inhibitors, then came back two months later to see which ones predicted less gratitude. Three did. **Narcissism. Cynicism. Materialism and envy.** The fourth, indebtedness, did not behave as expected. The authors single out narcissism and cynicism as the foundational pair — the traits they think the others grow out of, feeding each other over time. Read that as a description rather than a diagnosis. Very few people are narcissists. Nearly everybody has cynical afternoons, and the study's quiet suggestion is that those afternoons are not neutral: they are the conditions under which gratitude is hardest to reach. ## Wanting more costs grateful people less Roberts, Tsang and Manolis asked a sharper version of a familiar claim. Not *whether* materialism goes with dissatisfaction — that was already well established — but through what. Part of the route ran through negative feeling. More materialistic students reported more negative affect, and that went with lower satisfaction with life. Then the part worth keeping: **gratitude moderated it.** Among students who scored high on gratitude, the link between materialism and dissatisfaction was weaker. The same wanting seemed to cost them less. Worth saying plainly, because this is the kind of finding that gets inflated: this was 246 undergraduates answering questionnaires once. It shows a pattern, not a mechanism, and nobody in it was asked to practise anything. ## Gratitude does not delete envy. It changes which way it points. This is the finding that makes the whole subject more interesting than the slogan. Psychologists separate two kinds of envy. **Benign envy** makes you want to rise to what someone else has. **Malicious envy** makes you want them brought down. They are not mild and strong versions of one feeling — they lead to opposite behaviour. Xiang, Chao and Ye surveyed 426 students and found gratitude related to the two in opposite directions: more grateful people reported **more benign envy and less malicious envy**. Social support carried part of the relationship — grateful people reported more of it, and having it went with the shift. Notice what that describes. Not a serene person who has stopped seeing that others have more. A person who sees it and goes somewhere different with it. That is a target you can actually hit. "Never feel envy again" is not. The usual caution applies and it is a real one: everyone was measured at a single sitting, all of them undergraduates in China, so the arrow could run either way. It is a pattern worth knowing, not a proof. ## The oldest version of this advice is a list of debts Long before anyone measured it, the Stoics arrived at the practice from the other end. The most famous gratitude exercise in Western antiquity is Book I of Marcus Aurelius's *Meditations*, and it is not a meditation on being grateful. It is a **list**. Person by person, name by name, what each one gave him — his grandfather, his mother, his teachers, the man who taught him not to be taken in by conjurors. An emperor, writing privately to himself, opening his notebook with an inventory of what he owed other people. There is no self-improvement framing on it. It reads like accounting. Epictetus, born enslaved and teaching in a rented room, reaches something similar from the opposite end of Roman society: that the capacity to make use of whatever happens is itself the thing given to you, and the fitting response to that is close to continuous thanks. Two men who could not have had less in common in worldly terms, both practising the same reversal — turning attention from the ledger of what is missing to the ledger of what arrived. Neither of them was measuring himself against the person in front of him. ## Why it wears off, and the fix nobody expects Here is the trap: gratitude fades. You write the list, it works, you write it again, and by the third week it has gone flat. Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade found something counterintuitive about that. Over six weeks, people who counted their blessings **once a week** got happier. People asked to do it **three times a week** showed no benefit at all. More was worse. The likely reason is the same adaptation that makes comparison so persistent — do anything often enough and you stop seeing it, gratitude lists included. So if the practice has gone dead on you, doing more of it is probably the wrong move. Doing it less often, and with more attention, is the finding. ## What this looks like on a bad afternoon You are scrolling. Somebody's launch, somebody's house, somebody's holiday. The feeling arrives. The instruction is not to stop looking, and it is not to feel warmly about the person. It is narrower than either: - **Name the envy honestly.** Which kind is it — do you want what they have, or do you want them not to have it? That question alone tends to change the temperature. - **Write the debts, not the blessings.** Marcus's list was people. Vague gratitude for "my health" does less work than one specific name and what they actually did. - **Do it less often than you think.** Once a week beat three times a week. A flat practice is not a failed one; it is an over-used one. - **Notice that the comparison never ends.** There is no rung where it stops. That is the actual argument for finding something else to do with the attention — not that comparing is wicked, but that it has no finish line. Kurzgesagt's *An Antidote to Dissatisfaction* puts the underlying point better than most academic writing does: the wanting is not a malfunction. A mind that keeps reaching for the next thing is doing its job. Gratitude is not a cure for that, and anybody selling it as one is overselling. It is the most reliable way we know of to interrupt it. The quote, in the end, is half right. Comparison does take something. What it does not tell you — and what the research and the Stoics agree on — is that the way back is not to look away from other people. It is to look harder at what they have already given you. --- If you want the practice rather than the argument, [how to start a gratitude journal](/articles/how-to-start-a-gratitude-journal/) covers the mechanics, and [gratitude journal prompts](/articles/gratitude-journal-prompts/) has the questions. For what the evidence does and does not support, see [the benefits of gratitude journaling](/articles/benefits-of-gratitude-journaling/). ## Sources - **Quote Investigator (Garson O'Toole)**, *Quote Origin: Comparison Is the Thief of Joy* (2021) — https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/02/06/thief-of-joy/ - **Marcus Aurelius, trans. Gregory Hays**, *Meditations: A New Translation* (2002) — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75609622-meditations - **Epictetus, trans. Robert Dobbin**, *Discourses and Selected Writings* (2008) — https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/304102/discourses-and-selected-writings-by-epictetus-translated-and-edited-with-an-introduction-and-notes-by-robert-dobbin/ - **Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell**, *An Antidote to Dissatisfaction* (2019) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPPPFqsECz0 --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/comparison-is-the-thief-of-joy/ --- --- title: "Gratitude in World Religions" url: "https://steps.org/articles/gratitude-in-world-religions/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Traditions" updated: "2026-08-31" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Gratitude in World Religions Every major tradition trains gratitude, and none of them built the same practice: Judaism schedules it (Modeh Ani, the waking thanks), Islam analyses it (al-Ghazali's shukr: know the blessing, joy in the giver, act on it), Buddhism praises kataññuta with no creator addressed, Christianity names its central act of worship after the everyday word for giving thanks, and Marcus Aurelius opens his private notebook with a catalogue of debts. This page reports each in its own words — including where they genuinely disagree. Every major tradition that has thought seriously about how to live has built a gratitude practice — and none of them built the same one. This page reports each in its own words: what the practice is, whom the thanks addresses, and what the tradition says it is for. The differences are not decoration; they are the interesting part. One note from outside the traditions before we go in: when researchers pooled gratitude trials across twenty-eight countries — Choi and colleagues' large preregistered analysis — the practice's modest lift in wellbeing showed up across cultures. Whatever else divides the traditions below, the thing they are all training appears to travel. ## Judaism: recognising the good The Hebrew term of art is *hakarat hatov* — literally, recognising the good. In Jewish practice gratitude is scheduled rather than awaited: the first words a practising Jew says on waking are *Modeh Ani* — "I give thanks before You" — and the day that follows is structured by blessings that name specific goods as they arrive. The Koren Siddur, in Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's translation, shows the practice in its native form: not discussed, performed. The interpretive layer behind it is old. Bahya ibn Paquda's eleventh-century *Duties of the Heart* devotes its Gate of Examination to training sustained attention on benefits already received — gratitude as a discipline of noticing, nine centuries before anyone called that a journaling exercise. ## Christianity: thanksgiving as response In the biblical tradition, gratitude answers a deed: someone acted — created, rescued, fed — and thanks names the act and the giver, often in public. The New Testament's everyday word for giving thanks, *eucharisteo*, became the name of the church's central act of worship, the Eucharist — the standard reference on the word family is Kittel and Friedrich's *Theological Dictionary of the New Testament*. Among living voices, Brother David Steindl-Rast has spent a Benedictine lifetime teaching the reversal his TED talk made famous: it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy. This directory covers the Christian material in depth on its own pages: [the teaching](/articles/gratitude-in-the-bible/), and [twenty-five verses grouped for real use](/articles/bible-verses-about-gratitude/). ## Islam: shukr, owed and trained In the Qur'an — cited here in M. A. S. Abdel Haleem's translation — gratitude to God, *shukr*, is close to the definition of faith itself; its opposite, *kufr*, doubles as the word for unbelief. The best-known promise on the subject is 14:7: "If you are thankful, I will give you more." The tradition's deepest analysis is al-Ghazali's, in Book XXXII of his *Revival of the Religious Sciences*: shukr has three parts — **knowing the blessing, joy in the one who gave it, and acting in accordance with it**. Thankfulness, on this account, is done with mind, heart and hands; the daily speech-act *alhamdulillah* — all praise belongs to God — keeps it in the mouth as well. ## Buddhism: kataññuta, without an addressee The Pali canon praises *kataññuta* — gratitude, literally "knowing what was done" — as a mark of the good person, owed above all to parents and teachers; the standard English doorway to these texts is Bhikkhu Bodhi's anthology *In the Buddha's Words*. The structural difference matters and should not be smoothed over: Buddhist gratitude is not directed at a creator. It is a virtue of clear seeing — an accurate reckoning of benefits received and from whom — inside a tradition whose thanks has no throne to address. Reading it through theistic categories misreports it. ## Stoicism: the notebook and the classroom The most famous written gratitude exercise in Western antiquity is a private notebook: Book I of Marcus Aurelius's *Meditations* — in Gregory Hays's translation — is a catalogue of debts, person by person, naming what each one taught him. No audience was intended; the emperor was training himself. The school's other great voice arrives at the same practice from the opposite end of society. Epictetus — born enslaved — teaches in the *Discourses* that the power to make use of whatever happens is itself the gift, and that the rational response to existence runs close to continuous thanks. The Stoic "god" being thanked is providence-as-reason, not a person; here too the tradition deserves to be reported in its own terms. ## What they disagree about Set side by side, the traditions divide on real questions. **Whom is gratitude owed to?** A personal God (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), no one in particular (Buddhism), the rational order of things (Stoicism). **Does it obligate?** In Judaism and Islam, thankfulness is a duty with structure; in Buddhism it is a virtue of character; for the Stoics, an alignment with how things are. **Can it be commanded?** The Psalms command it constantly; Marcus only ever commands himself. This page takes no side — the disagreements are each tradition speaking precisely. ## What they agree about Underneath the disagreements, the shared spine is hard to miss. In every tradition here, gratitude is **specific** (blessings, debts and benefits are named, not gestured at), **regular** (waking words, daily prayers, a notebook kept), **trained** (al-Ghazali and Bahya both treat it as something learned), and very often **written or spoken aloud**. No tradition treats gratitude as a mood that shows up by itself. All of them treat it as a practice — which is also, for what it is worth, the one point on which the modern research agrees with all of them at once. *A named omission: Hinduism's devotional vocabulary of gratitude is rich, and it is deliberately not summarised here — this directory covers a tradition only when it can be carried by that tradition's own sources and scholars, and that corpus is not yet built. Absent beats misrepresented.* ## From reading to practice If one of these traditions is yours, its own practice is the place to start — the siddur's morning line, the answered-prayer page of [a prayer journal](/articles/prayer-journal/), the daily *alhamdulillah*, the emperor's list of debts. And if none of them is, the shared spine above is available to anyone with a notebook: specific, regular, trained, written — [which is where a gratitude journal begins](/articles/how-to-start-a-gratitude-journal/). ## Sources - **Jonathan Sacks (trans. and commentary)**, *The Koren Siddur* (2009) — https://korenpub.com/products/the-koren-sacks-siddurhardcoverleadersashkenaz - **Bahya ibn Paquda, Feldheim edition**, *Duties of the Heart (Chovot HaLevavot)* (1996) — https://feldheim.com/duties-of-the-heart-chovos-ha-levavos - **Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (eds.), abridged by Geoffrey W. Bromiley**, *Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume* (1985) — https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802824042/theological-dictionary-of-the-new-testament/ - **Br. David Steindl-Rast**, *Want to be happy? Be grateful - David Steindl-Rast at TEDGlobal 2013* (2013) — https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful - **M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (trans.)**, *The Qur'an: A New Translation* (2004) — https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-quran-9780199535958 - **Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, trans. Henry T. Littlejohn**, *Al-Ghazali on Patience and Thankfulness (Ihya' Book XXXII)* (2011) — https://its.org.uk/catalogue/al-ghazali-on-patience-and-thankfulness-paperback/ - **Bhikkhu Bodhi (ed. and trans.)**, *In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon* (2005) — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31548572-in-the-buddha-s-words - **Marcus Aurelius, trans. Gregory Hays**, *Meditations: A New Translation* (2002) — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75609622-meditations - **Epictetus, trans. Robert Dobbin**, *Discourses and Selected Writings* (2008) — https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/304102/discourses-and-selected-writings-by-epictetus-translated-and-edited-with-an-introduction-and-notes-by-robert-dobbin/ --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/gratitude-in-world-religions/ --- --- title: "How to Keep a Prayer Journal" url: "https://steps.org/articles/prayer-journal/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Faith & practice" updated: "2026-08-31" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # How to Keep a Prayer Journal A prayer journal is prayer in writing: requests set down and dated, scripture answered back in your own hand, and thanks recorded when answers come. The simplest complete setup is two running pages — requests, each with room in the margin, and answered prayers, where the margin gets filled in. Any notebook works; the practice is in the writing, not the binding. A prayer journal is prayer in writing: requests set down and dated, scripture copied out and answered back, thanks recorded when answers come — and honest pages for the days nothing seems to. People keep them for a plain reason: written prayer holds still. A wandering mind can reread the line it just wrote; a request dated in January can be revisited in June; an answered-prayer page becomes evidence of a kind no memory keeps. You do not need to buy anything special. Any notebook works — the practice is in the writing, not the binding. ## An old discipline, not a new hack Writing as part of prayer has a long lineage in Christian practice. Richard Foster's *Celebration of Discipline* — the modern classic on the spiritual disciplines — treats journaling as trained practice alongside prayer, study and meditation: something Christians *learn*, the way the tradition has always learned its prayers. The instinct is older than the paperback: "Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables," the LORD tells Habakkuk. And Paul's instruction in Philippians could be a prayer journal's epigraph: "in every thing by prayer and supplication *with thanksgiving* let your requests be made known unto God" — requests and thanks in the same breath, which is exactly the shape a good prayer journal takes. ## How to set one up Keep it simple enough to survive a busy week. One workable structure, drawn from how these journals are actually kept: 1. **Date every entry.** The dates are the point — they are what turn a notebook into a record of a relationship over time. 2. **Write the prayer, not about the prayer.** Address it. "Lord, I am worried about my son" does something "I should pray about my son" does not. 3. **Keep a requests page.** Running list, one line each, dated. Leave room beside each line. 4. **Keep an answered-prayer page.** The margin you left is for this: the date and the way it resolved — including the answers that looked nothing like the request. 5. **End with thanks.** One or two lines naming what was given today, however ordinary. Many traditions teach a fuller pattern — adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication is a widely used one — and it maps onto journal pages effortlessly. But the two-page version above is a complete practice on its own. ## Twelve prompts to start with 1. What am I actually asking for — in one honest sentence? 2. What happened today that I did not arrange? 3. Copy out one verse and answer it in your own hand. ([Twenty-five gratitude verses are collected here.](/articles/bible-verses-about-gratitude/)) 4. Who needs praying for today, by name? 5. What am I carrying that I have not said out loud? 6. What was answered this month — and how did the answer differ from the ask? 7. What am I thankful for that I prayed for a year ago? 8. Where did I fall short today, said plainly, without performance? 9. What would I ask for if I trusted the answer? 10. What ordinary thing — meal, roof, person — deserves a written thank-you today? 11. What is the vision worth writing plainly, Habakkuk-style, so I can run with it? 12. Read back one old entry. What do I see now that I could not see then? ## The answered-prayer page is a gratitude journal Worth noticing: the strongest page in a prayer journal — the answered-prayer record — is a gratitude journal under another name. It is specific, dated thanks for concrete things, which is precisely the practice the biblical tradition calls *todah* ([the teaching is here](/articles/gratitude-in-the-bible/)) and the practice Robert Emmons, who founded the modern science of gratitude, spent *Thanks!* arguing can be deliberately trained. Even outside any tradition, written reflection has been studied for decades — the measured benefits are modest and real, and they belong to the people who keep going, a summary owed to Frattaroli's synthesis of that research. None of this promises outcomes, and the tradition itself never sold the practice that way. A prayer journal is kept the way prayer is prayed — as faithfulness, not as a technique with a guarantee. ## Keeping it alive The failure mode of prayer journals is the failure mode of all journals: not bad pages, but forgotten ones. Tie the journal to something that already happens daily — morning coffee, the commute's first quiet minute, the last light off. Miss a day, start again the next; the tradition has never counted streaks. And if a full page is too much, the smallest complete entry is one dated line of thanks — [which is also exactly how a gratitude journal begins](/articles/how-to-start-a-gratitude-journal/). ## Sources - **Richard J. Foster**, *Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth* (1978) — https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4551167M/Celebration_of_discipline - **Biblica / Committee on Bible Translation**, *The Holy Bible, New International Version* (2011) — https://www.biblestudytools.com/niv/ - **Robert A. Emmons**, *Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier* (2007) — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1685992.Thanks_ --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/prayer-journal/ --- --- title: "Gratitude in the Bible" url: "https://steps.org/articles/gratitude-in-the-bible/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Scripture" updated: "2026-08-31" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Gratitude in the Bible In the Bible, gratitude is a response before it is a feeling: someone acted — created, rescued, fed — and thanksgiving names the deed and the giver, often in public. The Hebrew Bible even gave it a form you could watch, the todah offering with its told story and shared meal; and the New Testament's everyday word for giving thanks, eucharisteo, became the name of the church's central act of worship. This page is the teaching; the verses themselves are collected separately. Modern gratitude advice usually starts with you: your mood, your outlook, the benefits you can expect. The Bible starts from the other end. Someone acted first — created, rescued, fed, kept a promise — and thanksgiving is the fitting response to a deed that has already happened. You do not work gratitude up; you answer with it. That one reversal explains most of what follows. This is the teaching page; if you came for the verses themselves, [they are collected here](/articles/bible-verses-about-gratitude/), grouped for real use. ## A response, not a technique In the Hebrew Bible, thanksgiving belongs to covenant life: Israel gives thanks because of what the LORD *did* — brought out, brought back, fed, healed — and the thanks names the deed. Gratitude here is not a private optimisation. It is closer to testimony: an account, given in public, that credits a specific act to a specific giver. The tradition's own summary formula is the refrain that echoes through the Psalter: *give thanks, for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever* — thanks, then the reason. ## The todah: thanksgiving you could watch The Hebrew Bible gave thanksgiving a form with a body. The *todah* — usually translated "thanksgiving" — was an offering: a person who had come through danger brought a sacrifice, told the story of the rescue out loud, and shared the meal with others. Many thanksgiving psalms follow that shape on the page — distress recounted, rescue named, thanks declared before everyone. Robert Alter's translation and commentary keeps this audible: when a psalmist says "I will give thanks", something is being *done* — publicly, with goods, with witnesses at a table. If your picture of biblical gratitude is a private warm feeling, the todah is the correction: in this tradition, at full strength, thanksgiving was an event. ## Thanksgiving and praise are not the same word Walter Brueggemann's *Israel's Praise* draws a working distinction that many readers find clarifying: **thanksgiving names the concrete deed just done; praise celebrates who God is in general.** "You healed me" is thanks; "You are good" is praise. In the psalms the two chase each other constantly — thanks widening into praise, praise anchored by thanks. Brueggemann adds a warning that has aged well: worship that keeps the general praise but loses the concrete, nameable deed drifts into ideology — words without a story under them. That is one influential scholar's reading, from one school, and devotional traditions weight these texts differently. But its practical edge is hard to shake: in this tradition, the *specific* thank-you is the load-bearing one. ## "In every thing", not "for every thing" Paul's most quoted line on the subject — "in every thing give thanks" — is regularly misread as an instruction to call bad things good. The preposition resists that: the tradition's teachers have long noted it says *in*, not *for*. The Bible's own hardest gratitude texts make the same distinction from inside catastrophe: Habakkuk gives thanks with the harvest failed, Job blesses on the worst day of a life. Neither calls the loss a gift. The teaching is a posture held *within* circumstances, not a verdict *on* them — and the tradition never presents it as easy. ## The meal named "thank you" The New Testament's everyday verb for giving thanks is *eucharisteo* — the word used of Jesus at the last supper: he took bread, and gave thanks. It is the word the church's central act of worship, the Eucharist, is literally named after; the standard reference on the word family is Kittel and Friedrich's *Theological Dictionary of the New Testament*. Whatever else divides the churches — and Eucharistic theology genuinely divides them — the name itself preserves something none of them dispute: the tradition put an act of thanksgiving at the exact centre of what it does when it gathers. ## Where readings differ Honesty requires saying there is no single "biblical view" delivered without interpretation. Brueggemann's socio-critical school reads the psalms with an eye on power and ideology; devotional and liturgical traditions read the same texts as prayer first; Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches understand the Eucharist itself differently. This page reports the throughlines those readings share — thanks as response, the concrete deed, the public act, the meal — and leaves the rest to the traditions themselves. ## Reading it for yourself The tradition's own method is unglamorous: return to the texts on a schedule, and let the naming of specific deeds do the work. [The verse collection](/articles/bible-verses-about-gratitude/) is built for exactly that — twenty-five passages grouped by the moment you might need one. And if you want to answer the old texts in your own hand, one written line a day naming what was given is where [a gratitude journal begins](/articles/how-to-start-a-gratitude-journal/). ## Sources - **Biblica / Committee on Bible Translation**, *The Holy Bible, New International Version* (2011) — https://www.biblestudytools.com/niv/ - **Robert Alter**, *The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary* (2018) — https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393292497 - **Walter Brueggemann**, *Israel's Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology* (1988) — https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/1753/Israel-Praise-Doxology-against-Idolatry-and-Ideology - **Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (eds.), abridged by Geoffrey W. Bromiley**, *Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume* (1985) — https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802824042/theological-dictionary-of-the-new-testament/ --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/gratitude-in-the-bible/ --- --- title: "Bible Verses About Gratitude" url: "https://steps.org/articles/bible-verses-about-gratitude/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Scripture" updated: "2026-08-31" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Bible Verses About Gratitude Scripture returns to gratitude constantly: the Psalms command it — "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving" — Paul makes it unconditional with "in every thing give thanks", and Habakkuk keeps it honest, giving thanks with the harvest failed. Below are twenty-five verses grouped by the moment you might reach for one — mornings, hard seasons, the table — each with a line of context, quoted from the public-domain King James Version. Gratitude is not a theme the Bible visits occasionally. It is standing furniture — the Psalms command it, the prophets return to it in ruins, and Paul writes it into almost every letter he sends. This page is a reference shelf: twenty-five verses, grouped by the moment you might actually reach for one, each with a line of context so it reads as more than a caption. Quotations are from the King James Version, which is in the public domain. Read them afterwards in whatever translation you actually use — for most readers today that is the NIV. ## Psalms of thanksgiving The Psalms are where biblical gratitude lives at full volume — many of them were written for the *todah*, the thanksgiving offering, a public act of thanks with a meal attached. 1. **Psalm 100:4** — "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name." The classic door: thanksgiving as the way *in*. 2. **Psalm 107:1** — "O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever." The refrain the whole psalm hangs rescue stories on. 3. **Psalm 118:24** — "This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." Gratitude scoped to a single day — the most journal-shaped verse in the book. 4. **Psalm 9:1** — "I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works." Thanks told out loud, itemised. 5. **Psalm 95:2** — "Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms." The invitation that opens many traditions' morning prayer. ## For mornings 6. **Lamentations 3:22–23** — "It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness." Written from the ashes of Jerusalem — morning gratitude with its eyes open. 7. **Psalm 92:1** — "It is a good thing to give thanks unto the LORD, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High." A psalm headed, literally, "for the sabbath day". 8. **Psalm 136:1** — "O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever." Twenty-six verses, and the second half of every one is the same line of thanks — repetition as practice, not padding. 9. **1 Chronicles 16:34** — "O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever." The same refrain, sung the day the ark came home. 10. **James 1:17** — "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." The theology under every gratitude list: the good things were given. ## Paul, who made thanks unconditional 11. **1 Thessalonians 5:16–18** — "Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." Possibly the most quoted gratitude text in the New Testament — note it says *in* every thing, not *for* every thing. 12. **Philippians 4:6** — "Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Written from prison; thanksgiving woven into asking itself. 13. **Colossians 3:15** — "And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful." Three plain words carrying the verse. 14. **Colossians 4:2** — "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving." Thanks as the *watchfulness* of prayer — attention, kept up. 15. **Ephesians 5:20** — "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul at maximum scope. 16. **2 Corinthians 9:15** — "Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift." The shortest doxology he wrote. ## For hard seasons 17. **Habakkuk 3:17–18** — "Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines … yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation." Gratitude with the harvest failed — the tradition's hardest, most honest text on the subject. 18. **Job 1:21** — "The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." Spoken on the worst day of a life. 19. **Psalm 34:1** — "I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth." *At all times* is the whole claim. 20. **Jonah 2:9** — "But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed." Prayed, the text says, from inside the fish. 21. **Psalm 50:14** — "Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High." Thanks framed as the offering God actually asks for. ## At the table 22. **Psalm 145:15–16** — "The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing." The verse behind countless table graces. 23. **Acts 27:35** — "He took bread, and gave thanks to God in presence of them all." Paul, mid-shipwreck, saying grace anyway. 24. **1 Timothy 4:4** — "For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving." Reception with thanks as what sanctifies the ordinary. 25. **Luke 22:19** — "And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it." The night before the crucifixion — the verse the next section is about. ## Two words worth knowing **Todah** (Hebrew) — in the Hebrew Bible, "thanksgiving" is often not a feeling but an *offering*: a declared, public act of thanks, frequently with a shared meal. Robert Alter's translation and commentary keeps this audible in the Psalms — when a psalmist says "I will give thanks", something is being *done*. **Eucharisteo** (Greek) — the New Testament's everyday verb for giving thanks, the word in Luke 22:19 above. It is the word the church's central meal, the Eucharist, is literally named after — which means the tradition put an act of thanksgiving at the exact centre of its worship. The standard reference on the word family is Kittel and Friedrich's *Theological Dictionary of the New Testament*. ## From reading to practice Traditions that live with these texts do not read them once; they return on a schedule. Benedictine communities — Brother David Steindl-Rast's, for one — pray the Psalms through in a rolling cycle, morning after morning. And Robert Emmons, who founded the modern science of gratitude, argues in *Thanks!* that gratitude is a practice you train rather than a temperament you are issued — which is, in effect, what the Psalter has been saying all along. A simple way in: take one verse from this page each morning, and write down one thing from your own last day that it names. That is a gratitude journal with very old roots — [prompts are here](/articles/gratitude-journal-prompts/) if you want more structure. ## Sources - **Biblica / Committee on Bible Translation**, *The Holy Bible, New International Version* (2011) — https://www.biblestudytools.com/niv/ - **Robert Alter**, *The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary* (2018) — https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393292497 - **Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (eds.), abridged by Geoffrey W. Bromiley**, *Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume* (1985) — https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802824042/theological-dictionary-of-the-new-testament/ - **Br. David Steindl-Rast**, *Want to be happy? Be grateful - David Steindl-Rast at TEDGlobal 2013* (2013) — https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful - **Robert A. Emmons**, *Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier* (2007) — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1685992.Thanks_ --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/bible-verses-about-gratitude/ --- --- title: "Gratitude Affirmations" url: "https://steps.org/articles/gratitude-affirmations/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Affirmations" updated: "2026-08-31" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Gratitude Affirmations A gratitude affirmation is an affirmation in the completed tense. "I am confident" asserts something you are reaching for — and can ring false as you say it. "I am grateful for…" gives thanks for something already true, which is why affirmation teachers from Neville Goddard to Esther Hicks lean on thanksgiving language — and why the best-tested gratitude exercise in psychology is, in form, a list of completed things. Below: 40 to start from, and how to write your own. Say "I am confident" into a mirror on a bad morning and some part of you answers back: *no you're not.* That talk-back is the best-known problem with affirmations — the reach statement that rings false at the exact moment you need it to ring true. Gratitude affirmations sidestep the problem with one change of grammar. **"I am grateful for the friend who called last night" cannot be argued with. It already happened.** You are not asserting a self you hope to become; you are giving thanks for something already on the record. The confidence arrives anyway — as a by-product of noticing, rather than a claim your inner critic gets to cross-examine. That one idea — thank first, in the completed tense — is the whole page. Everything below is ways to use it. ## Thank as if it has already happened The affirmation tradition itself points this way, and has for most of a century. Neville Goddard, whose 1952 *The Power of Awareness* is still the most quoted text of the movement, taught one instruction above the rest: **assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled** — inhabit the state as already true, present tense, felt rather than argued. Now notice what gratitude is: the feeling of *already having*. A gratitude sentence is Goddard's assumption with training wheels on — the fulfilled feeling, borrowed from something real. And in *Ask and It Is Given* — the book that systematised the modern law-of-attraction teaching into twenty-two named processes — Esther and Jerry Hicks make the point without needing the grammar at all: appreciation is named the closest state to "Source Energy" there is. Not one process among the twenty-two, but the destination all of them aim at. Gratitude, in that tradition, is not a warm-up for the practice. It *is* the practice. These are teachings, not trials, and they stand on their own terms. What is striking is that the psychology, arriving from an entirely different direction, landed on the same grammar. ## What the research adds The most-tested gratitude exercise in psychology — Martin Seligman's "three good things" — is, in form, a completed-tense affirmation list: each night, write three things that went well, and why. No reaching, no *I am*. Just what already happened, named. Trials of practices like it, run across twenty-eight countries and gathered most recently in a large preregistered analysis by Choi and colleagues, keep finding the same thing: a modest but remarkably consistent lift in wellbeing, wherever it is measured. And Robert Emmons, who founded the field, spent a whole book — *Thanks!* — on the position that gratitude is not a temperament you are born with but a practice you train. For the full honest read of that evidence, effect sizes and all, see [Does journaling actually work?](/articles/does-journaling-work/) The one-line version for this page: **the version of affirmations with the strongest research behind it is the grateful version.** ## 40 gratitude affirmations Read them slowly — or better, write your own variants. The specifics are where the practice lives. **For the morning** 1. I am grateful I get another day, whatever it holds. 2. I am grateful for the sleep I did get. 3. I am grateful for the first quiet minute before the day starts. 4. I am grateful for coffee, and for whoever grew it. 5. I am grateful there is something on today I would miss if it were cancelled. 6. I am grateful for a body that carried me through yesterday. 7. I am grateful for the light coming in the window right now. 8. I am grateful this day has not been lived yet. **For the people in your life** 9. I am grateful for the person who made me laugh most recently. 10. I am grateful for the friend I can call without rehearsing first. 11. I am grateful for the people who knew me before I was any good. 12. I am grateful for whoever taught me the thing I now do best. 13. I am grateful for the family I have, complicated as families are. 14. I am grateful for the stranger who was kind for no reason. 15. I am grateful for the people who stayed. 16. I am grateful someone, somewhere, is glad I exist. **For your body and health** 17. I am grateful for lungs that breathe without being asked. 18. I am grateful for every part of me that works and never gets thanked. 19. I am grateful for food today, and the taste of it. 20. I am grateful for the walk my legs can still take me on. 21. I am grateful for rest, when I finally allow it. 22. I am grateful for hands that can make things. 23. I am grateful for healing I didn't have to supervise. 24. I am grateful for the senses bringing me this exact moment. **For hard days** 25. I am grateful for the hard thing that taught me what I could survive. 26. I am grateful this feeling is a visitor, not a resident. 27. I am grateful for the smallest good thing about today — and there was one. 28. I am grateful for the people who have sat with me in the dark. 29. I am grateful for the problems I no longer have. 30. I am grateful I have been wrong before about things never getting better. 31. I am grateful for what remains, which is more than it feels like tonight. 32. I am grateful tomorrow has not heard about today. **For the life you have** 33. I am grateful for the home I return to, whatever its size. 34. I am grateful for the work that uses something in me. 35. I am grateful for the music that found me at the right time. 36. I am grateful for books, and for whoever wrote the one that changed me. 37. I am grateful for the place I live, and what it looks like in good light. 38. I am grateful for the ordinary Tuesday when nothing went wrong. 39. I am grateful for the younger me who kept going. 40. I am grateful for this life — the actual one, not the planned one. ## How to write your own Three rules, and the first does most of the work: 1. **Completed tense.** Not "I am becoming" — *I am grateful for*. If it has not happened yet, it is a wish, and wishes belong in a different notebook. 2. **Specific beats sweeping.** "I am grateful for my health" slides off. "I am grateful my back let me lift my daughter this morning" lands — because it happened once, to you, today. 3. **Say why.** Seligman's exercise asks for the why on purpose: the reason is where the feeling is. "I am grateful for Sam" is a name; "I am grateful Sam drove an hour just to sit with me" is a memory. ## If affirmations never stuck, start every one with "I am grateful" The quiet suggestion of this whole page: you do not have to choose between the affirmation tradition and the evidence. Take any affirmation you have ever bounced off and convert it — *I am confident* becomes *I am grateful for the moment I handled well yesterday.* Same target, sturdier grammar. And if you want the practice rather than the list: gratitude affirmations kept daily are a gratitude journal by another name. [The prompts are here](/articles/gratitude-journal-prompts/), and [what regular practice tends to give people is here](/articles/benefits-of-gratitude-journaling/). ## Sources - **Neville Goddard**, *The Power of Awareness* (1952) — https://archive.org/details/NevilleGoddardWorkbooks - **Esther Hicks and Jerry Hicks**, *Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires* (2004) — https://www.hayhouse.com/ask-and-it-is-given-paperback - **Robert A. Emmons**, *Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier* (2007) — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1685992.Thanks_ --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/gratitude-affirmations/ --- --- title: "How to Start a Gratitude Journal" url: "https://steps.org/articles/how-to-start-a-gratitude-journal/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "How-to" updated: "2026-08-29" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # How to Start a Gratitude Journal Write three specific things you are glad of, add one sentence about why for at least one of them, and attach the whole thing to something you already do every day. That is a complete gratitude journal entry — it should take about three minutes, and the research suggests keeping it that small is a feature rather than a compromise. You need a notebook and about three minutes. That really is the whole setup — the difficulty of a gratitude journal is never the starting, it is the keeping, and almost everything below is aimed at that. ## The five-minute version 1. **Pick a fixed moment.** Not a time of day — a moment you already have. After you put the kettle on. Once you are in bed. 2. **Write three things you are glad of.** Specific ones. 3. **Add one sentence about why**, for at least one of them. 4. **Stop.** Three lines is a complete entry. It is supposed to feel too easy. That is a real practice, not a stripped-down version of one. The original counting-blessings experiments used small counts repeated over weeks, and so did every study since. ## Attach it to something you already do The single most transferable finding on habits is about **context**, not willpower. Lally and colleagues had 96 people repeat a daily behaviour in a consistent setting — "after breakfast" — and modelled how automatic it became. Automaticity rose along a predictable curve when the behaviour was tied to an existing anchor. So do not decide to journal "in the evenings". Decide to journal **after you brush your teeth**. The anchor does the remembering for you. **And expect it to take a while.** The median time to automaticity in that study was 66 days — but the range ran from **18 to 254**. If it does not feel automatic after a month, you are comfortably inside the range the research actually reports. That is the normal experience, not a sign you are doing it wrong. ## Be specific, and say why "My family" repeated for a month stops doing anything. "My brother replied within a minute when I needed him to" does not. The *why* sentence is worth the extra ten seconds. In the writing literature, entries using explanatory language — because, realise, understand — track with the largest measured benefits. Explaining seems to do more than listing. ## How often, honestly This is the one place the research is genuinely interesting rather than obvious, and it points in two directions at once. **Too little does nothing.** Reviewing nine randomised workplace trials, Komase and colleagues found interventions asking for four gratitude lists or fewer reported no significant change on any outcome. **Too much of the same thing also stops working.** Over six weeks, Lyubomirsky and colleagues had people count their blessings once a week or three times a week. The **once-a-week group ended up happier. The three-times-a-week group showed no benefit at all** — they appeared to get bored, and the exercise became a chore. **The resolution is not a magic number.** It is: often enough to become a habit, varied enough to stay real. If your entries start repeating, that is the signal to change the question, not to quit. A workable default is most days, kept short, with the prompt changing when it goes stale. ## What a modest dose actually bought Worth knowing before you start, because it sets a realistic bar. Cheng and colleagues ran a double-blind randomised trial across five hospitals. Practitioners wrote a gratitude diary **twice a week for four weeks** — eight entries in total. Three months later, compared with a no-diary control, they reported lower depressive symptoms (d = -0.49) and substantially lower perceived stress (d = -0.95). Eight entries. Not eight months of daily discipline. The trial also included a group writing about **hassles**, and that group looked like the control. Writing itself was not what helped. Writing about what went right was. ## Choosing your format There is no evidence that paper beats an app or the reverse, so pick whichever you will actually open. What the evidence does favour is **writing it down over merely thinking it**: when students were randomised to journaling, reflection, or app-prompted reflection, all three beat the control and journaling appeared strongest. If a blank page feels intimidating, a book of prompts is a legitimate way in — Jaouad's *The Book of Alchemy* is a hundred of them, and none require you to write well. ## Your first week - **Day 1** — three things, one *why* sentence. Under three minutes. - **Days 2–5** — same anchor, same length. Resist expanding it. - **Day 6** — read the week back. Notice which entries were specific and which were placeholders. - **Day 7** — keep going, or move the anchor if it is not sticking. Moving the anchor is the fix far more often than trying harder. Missing a day does not undo anything. In the habit data, a single missed day did not meaningfully change the trajectory. ## Why this is worth three minutes Because the effect is real and modest, and modest things that are nearly free are worth doing. If you want the honest numbers before committing, the benefits guide in this collection lays them out — including where they are smaller than you have been told. ## Sources - **Suleika Jaouad**, *The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life* (2025) — https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/768288/the-book-of-alchemy-by-suleika-jaouad/ --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/how-to-start-a-gratitude-journal/ --- --- title: "Does Journaling Actually Work? What the Evidence Shows" url: "https://steps.org/articles/does-journaling-work/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Evidence" updated: "2026-08-31" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Does Journaling Actually Work? What the Evidence Shows Yes — journaling has two kinds of evidence behind it: centuries of practitioners who swear by it, and modern trials showing real, modest average gains from even brief first attempts. The gap between the two is mostly dose and subject — the trials measured strangers writing three times; the practice its advocates describe is chosen, personal, and kept. Write about what matters to you and keep going, and you are on the right side of both. Yes. The people who keep journals have been saying so for as long as there have been journals, and the research — read for what it actually measured — agrees more than its headline numbers suggest. What decides your outcome is not a lab average: it is what you write about, and whether you keep going. ## Start with the people who practise it Brother David Steindl-Rast, the Benedictine monk whose TED talk carried the idea to a mainstream audience, puts the case in one sentence: **it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.** He is not reporting a trial. He is reporting a monastic lifetime of the practice — and a fair answer to "does it work" keeps that kind of testimony on the table alongside the data, because the data, as we are about to see, measured something much smaller. Robert Emmons, the researcher who founded the scientific study of gratitude, made the same bet in book form: *Thanks!* argues that gratitude is not a temperament you are born with but a practice you can train — and that training it makes people measurably happier. When the person who ran the foundational trials chooses to argue the practice that warmly, that is information too. So the practitioners are not hedging. The numbers below are smaller than their testimony — and the gap between the two has an explanation worth reading before you take the numbers as the final word. ## The number The most complete answer comes from Frattaroli's 2006 meta-analysis in *Psychological Bulletin*: **146 randomised studies**, analysed with random-effects models, average effect **r = .075**. That is small. It is also the most trustworthy figure in the field, and here is why that matters. Two earlier syntheses — Smyth in 1998 and Frisina and colleagues in 2004 — reported larger effects using **fixed-effects** models, which assume every study estimates one identical underlying effect and therefore limit how far you can generalise. Frattaroli's analysis was bigger, better specified, and landed **lower**. **When a better analysis produces a smaller number, the smaller number is usually closer to the truth.** For gratitude journaling specifically, the equivalent figure is Choi and colleagues' 2025 preregistered meta-analysis in *PNAS*: 145 papers, 24,804 participants, 28 countries, **Hedges' g = 0.19**. Two different literatures, two decades apart, both landing on "small but real". That convergence is worth more than any single dramatic study. **What those numbers measure matters as much as their size.** Both pool trials that asked *randomly assigned* participants — most of whom had never chosen to journal — to write for a handful of sessions, often across a single week. That is a fair test of a first attempt. It is not a measurement of somebody who decided to keep a journal and then kept it for a year, and no meta-analysis in this field has measured that person. Frattaroli's own moderator analysis points the same way: how much and how long people wrote changed the result. ## What it seems to do **Reduce mental load.** Klein and Boals ran two semester-long experiments and found students who wrote about a stressful experience showed larger **working memory** gains seven weeks later than students who wrote about a trivial topic, alongside declines in intrusive thinking. The proposed mechanism is straightforward: unresolved things occupy attention, and writing stops you carrying them. **Help with processing a specific event.** Qian and colleagues pooled eight randomised trials of writing for pregnancy-related distress. It worked for **post-traumatic stress**. It did **not** produce the expected effects on anxiety or stress, and results for depression were inconclusive. That split is the clearest illustration of what this tool is: something for working through a particular difficult thing, not a general-purpose calming technique. **Modestly support mental health as an adjunct.** Sohal and colleagues screened 3,797 articles and meta-analysed 20 randomised controlled trials. Journaling arms improved more than controls — a gap of roughly **5%**, a small-to-moderate Cohen's d. Their own summary is unusually blunt: the data are highly heterogeneous, methodological flaws limit firm conclusions, and the recommendation is **B-level, not A**. Their practical conclusion is the right one to carry: given the low risk and low cost, it is worth considering as something that **complements** evidence-based care. Not as a substitute for it. ## What it does not do **It did not beat control for cancer patients.** Zachariae and O'Toole pooled 16 randomised trials and found no statistically significant effect on psychological health (g = 0.04), physical health (g = 0.08), or quality of life (g = 0.09). Every confidence interval crossed zero, and the result held regardless of control condition, setting or cancer type. Zhou and colleagues, pooling an overlapping set, did find a short-term reduction in physical symptoms that **faded past three months** — and no psychological effect at any point. Two careful reviews of similar literature reaching different conclusions is the honest state of this field. **It does not reliably change your body.** Boggiss and colleagues reviewed 19 randomised gratitude studies for physical health outcomes. Subjective sleep quality improved in **5 of 8** studies. Everything else — blood pressure, inflammation, physical symptoms — was understudied, mixed, or rested on a single study, and most included studies carried risk-of-bias concerns. **It can make you feel worse first.** Smyth's 1998 synthesis found writing reliably increased distress immediately afterwards — and that this short-term distress was **unrelated** to whether people benefited. Feeling raw after writing about something painful is a documented part of the process, not a sign it is going wrong. ## The failure mode worth knowing before you start Writing about yourself is not automatically good for you. Takano and Tanno separated **self-reflection** — curious, problem-solving — from **self-rumination**, the anxious loop that revisits the same hurt without resolving it. Reflection predicted lower depression; rumination predicted higher. But because people who reflect also tend to ruminate, **the total effect of self-reflection came out at almost zero.** An open page hosts either mode. That is the strongest practical case for prompts over blank pages: a prompt points attention somewhere, and an empty page lets it circle. If journaling consistently leaves you worse, that is a recognised pattern, not a personal failing. If you are struggling with your mental health, please see [our safety page](/safety/) for crisis resources — a journal is not treatment and this page is not medical advice. ## Why a small effect can still be worth it Read `r = .075` and the reasonable reaction is "why bother". Three reasons: 1. **The cost is minutes and the risks are minimal.** Small effects are worth having when they are nearly free. Sohal and colleagues make exactly this argument. 2. **The average hides the range.** Frattaroli identified moderators — conditions under which writing works better or worse. Some people benefit considerably more than the average. 3. **Dose is under your control.** Komase and colleagues found interventions asking for **four entries or fewer produced no significant change on any outcome.** A practice that is too small to work is the most common version of "journaling didn't work for me". ## What actually decides it Not the notebook, not the prompt wording. **Whether you keep doing it.** That is the least glamorous conclusion in this literature and the best supported. Most journals die of forgetting rather than failure, which makes the delivery question more interesting than the format question. The clearest evidence on that point is Gold and colleagues' randomised trial of three-good-things prompts sent **by text message**, where positive affect was still significantly improved at three months and retention through the study was high. Komase and colleagues' review points the same way from the other direction: interventions asking for four entries or fewer changed nothing measurable. So the practical question is not which notebook to buy. It is what will still be putting the question in front of you in week six. ## Sources - **Br. David Steindl-Rast**, *Want to be happy? Be grateful - David Steindl-Rast at TEDGlobal 2013* (2013) — https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful - **Robert A. Emmons**, *Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier* (2007) — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1685992.Thanks_ --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/does-journaling-work/ --- --- title: "Gratitude Journal Prompts That Hold Up to the Research" url: "https://steps.org/articles/gratitude-journal-prompts/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Prompts" updated: "2026-08-29" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Gratitude Journal Prompts That Hold Up to the Research Two questions do most of the work in a gratitude journal: what are you grateful for today, and what are you grateful for in life. The forty prompts below are for when those stop producing anything new — and the evidence is clearer about how often you answer than about which words you use. Most gratitude prompt lists are 200 items long and none of them tell you how many to answer, how often, or what the research actually supports. Here are 40, grouped by the situation you are in, with the evidence attached. **Start with the two questions that have the most evidence behind them**, then use the rest when you are stuck. ## The two that do the most work 1. What are you grateful for today? 2. What are you grateful for in life? These are deliberately different. The first is about the last 24 hours and gets specific fast. The second is about the standing facts of your life and tends to repeat — which is fine, and which is why the banks below exist. Seligman and colleagues tested a version of this in a six-group, randomised, **placebo-controlled** trial: write down a small number of good things, regularly. Three of the five exercises they tested produced lasting increases in happiness and decreases in depressive symptoms. **Two did not** — which is a large part of why the surviving ones are worth your attention. ## Today (10) 3. What went right today that you did not expect? 4. What did someone do for you today, however small? 5. What did you eat or drink today that was genuinely good? 6. What worked today that usually does not? 7. Which part of today would you happily repeat tomorrow? 8. What did you get to do today that some version of you could not? 9. What was easier today than it used to be? 10. What did you notice today that you would normally walk past? 11. What went wrong today but not as badly as it could have? 12. Who made today lighter? ## In life (10) 13. What do you have now that you once hoped for? 14. Which relationship would you miss most, and what specifically about it? 15. What can your body still do that you are glad of? 16. What do you own that you would replace immediately if it broke? 17. Which decision from five years ago are you still benefiting from? 18. Who taught you something you still use? 19. What is boring about your life that other people do not have? 20. What problem do you no longer have? 21. Which place can you picture that makes you feel steadier? 22. What are you good at that you did not used to be? ## When you keep writing the same thing (8) Repetition is the normal failure mode, and it has a name in the literature — the effect of a positive practice fades as it becomes familiar. These are angle changes on the things you already wrote. 23. You have named the same person several times. What did they do *this week*? 24. Take something you are grateful for and name who made it possible. 25. Name the same thing again, but the smallest part of it. 26. What would be different tomorrow if this thing vanished tonight? 27. Which detail of it would you describe to someone who has never seen it? 28. When did you first have this, and what was it like before? 29. What almost stopped you from having it? 30. What about it will not be true in five years? ## Hard days (7) No therapeutic claims here — this is a journal, not treatment. If you are struggling, see [our safety page](/safety/) for crisis resources. 31. What is one thing that did not get worse today? 32. Who would notice if you disappeared, and would probably say so? 33. What is keeping you fed, warm, or upright right now? 34. What did you survive before that you thought you would not? 35. Name one thing you are not grateful for. Then one you are. 36. What would you tell a friend to be grateful for, in your situation? 37. What is the smallest good thing you can find today? ## People (5) 38. Who helped you this week without being asked? 39. Who are you glad you are no longer angry with? 40. Whose message would you be pleased to see right now? 41. Who has been patient with you lately? 42. What did someone say to you once that you still repeat to yourself? *(Forty prompts, numbered 3 to 42 — the two above them are the practice itself.)* ## How to start a gratitude journal **Answer fewer, more often.** The clearest practical finding in this literature is about dose, not wording: Komase and colleagues reviewed nine randomised workplace trials and found that **interventions asking for four lists or fewer reported no significant change on any outcome.** Whatever this does, it does not do it in a weekend. **Three answers is a sensible target, one is a complete morning.** Emmons and McCullough's original counting-blessings experiments and Seligman's three-good-things exercise both used small counts, repeated. **Write it down rather than think it.** Tolcher and colleagues randomised students to journaling, reflection, or app-prompted reflection. All three beat the control; **journaling appeared strongest.** With 132 people across four arms it is a hint rather than a verdict, but it points the same way as everything else. **Be specific.** "My family" repeated for a month stops doing anything. "My brother texted me back within a minute" does not. **Expect a small effect.** The most trustworthy number available is Choi and colleagues' 2025 preregistered meta-analysis: 145 papers, **24,804 participants across 28 countries, Hedges' g = 0.19.** Small, real, robust against publication bias. Worth five minutes a day; not worth rearranging your life around. ## What the evidence does not support Boggiss and colleagues went looking for physical health effects across 19 randomised gratitude studies. The best-supported one was **subjective sleep quality, improved in 5 of 8 studies.** Blood pressure, inflammation and physical symptoms rested on far thinner evidence, and most included studies carried risk-of-bias concerns. So if you see a claim that a gratitude journal lowers your blood pressure, that is the review it is not supported by. ## The part that actually decides it Not the notebook, not the wording. **Whether the prompt reaches you on an ordinary morning.** Most gratitude journals die of forgetting rather than of failure, which makes delivery a bigger lever than phrasing. The most direct test of that is Gold and colleagues' randomised trial, which sent three-good-things prompts **by text message** three times a week: positive affect improved at one month and was **still significantly improved at three**, with high retention through the end of the study. Depression, gratitude and life satisfaction moved the same way without reaching significance — so this is a result about getting the practice in front of people, not a claim that texting is magic. Whatever mechanism reliably puts the question in your day is doing more work than the question's wording. ## Sources - **Robert A. Emmons**, *Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier* (2007) — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1685992.Thanks_ --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/gratitude-journal-prompts/ --- --- title: "Journaling vs a Diary: What Is Actually Different" url: "https://steps.org/articles/journaling-vs-diary/" type: "article" author: "Tiago Martins" topic: "Definitions" updated: "2026-08-29" source: "Steps — steps.org" --- # Journaling vs a Diary: What Is Actually Different A diary records what happened. A journal works on what happened. The distinction matters because nearly all the research showing a benefit studied journal-style writing about thoughts and feelings, not event logs — and because writing that explains does measurably more than writing that simply recounts. Both are notebooks. Both are dated. The difference is what you are trying to get out of them, and it changes what you write. **A diary records what happened. A journal works on it.** That distinction is not pedantry — it is the line the research falls on. Almost every study showing a benefit from writing asked people to write about *thoughts and feelings*, not events. When Klein and Boals measured working memory gains seven weeks after a writing exercise, the gains tracked with how often people used **cause and insight words** — because, realise, understand. Writing that explains did more than writing that logs. ## The short version | | Diary | Journal | | --- | --- | --- | | Main job | Record what happened | Work through what happened | | Typical entry | Events, in order | Thoughts, feelings, questions | | Written for | Your future self, as a record | Your present self, as thinking | | Reread often? | Yes, that is the point | Often never | | Studied in trials? | Rarely | Extensively | Nobody polices these words, and plenty of people use "diary" for something that is clearly a journal. British English leans "diary" where American English leans "journal". If you call yours a diary and it helps, the label is not the problem. ## Why the distinction earns its keep There is a large evidence base behind journal-style writing and effectively none behind pure event-logging. The most complete synthesis is Frattaroli's 2006 meta-analysis of **146 randomised studies**, which found a positive, significant effect — and put it at **r = .075**. That number is small, and it is the honest one. Earlier syntheses reported more; Frattaroli's was bigger and better specified, and it landed lower. When that happens, the lower figure is usually the truer one. **So: real, modest, and worth about five minutes.** Not transformative. Anyone promising more than that is not citing this literature. ## The trap that sits inside journaling Writing about yourself is not automatically good for you, and this is the single most useful thing to know before you start. Psychology splits self-focus into two modes. **Self-reflection** is curious and works a problem. **Self-rumination** is the anxious loop that revisits the same hurt without resolving it. Takano and Tanno tracked both and found self-reflection predicted *lower* depression, self-rumination predicted *higher* — and because people who reflect also tend to ruminate, **the total effect of self-reflection came out near zero.** A blank page will host either mode happily. That is the strongest practical argument for prompts: a prompt points attention somewhere, and an empty page lets it circle. If journaling reliably leaves you feeling worse, that is a documented pattern with a name, not a personal failing. ## Which one should you keep? **Keep a diary if** you want a record — travel, a project, a child's first years, anything you will genuinely want to read back. Diaries are wonderful at this and journals are bad at it, because journals are often never reread. **Keep a journal if** something is on your mind and you want to think about it in a way that goes somewhere. Cameron's morning pages and Carroll's bullet journal are both journals by this definition, at opposite ends of structure: three unstructured longhand pages versus short migrated bullets. **Keep both** if you like. They are not in competition. ## One more axis: does it read you back? A newer fork is worth deciding deliberately, because it changes what the notebook is. Several journaling apps now analyse what you write and hand something back — summaries, mood readings, patterns, prompts generated from your last entry. Mindsera and Rosebud both work this way. Others simply store what you wrote and get out of the way. Neither is wrong, and some people specifically want the analysis. But they are different objects. A notebook that interprets you is doing something to your writing; a notebook that files it is not. Decide which you are picking before you have three months of entries inside it, because moving is harder later. ## Starting either one The evidence is thin on format and clearer on frequency. Komase and colleagues' review of workplace gratitude studies found that interventions asking for **four lists or fewer showed no significant change on any outcome** — whatever writing does, it does not do it in a weekend. So: pick the one that matches what you actually want, keep the entries short, and repeat them more times than feels impressive. ## Sources - **James W. Pennebaker, Joshua M. Smyth**, *Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain (Third Edition)* (2016) — https://www.guilford.com/books/Opening-Up-by-Writing-It-Down/Pennebaker-Smyth/9781462524921 - **Julia Cameron**, *The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity* (1992) — https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/349644/the-artists-way-by-julia-cameron/ - **Ryder Carroll**, *The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future* (2018) — https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562034/the-bullet-journal-method-by-ryder-carroll/ --- From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/articles/journaling-vs-diary/