The gratitude alarm
It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. Every moment is a gift. There is no certainty that you will have another moment, with all the opportunity that it contains. The gift within every gift is the opportunity it offers. Most often it is the opportunity to enjoy it, but sometimes a difficult gift is given to us and that can be an opportunity to rise to the challenge. ―Brother David Steindl-Rast
👥 Serves: 1 person
🎚 Difficulty: Easy
⏳ Total time: 12 hours
🥣 Ingredients: 1 Alarm, 1 sheet of paper, 1 pen, “I am here now” booklet by The Mindfulness Project (if you’re curious to find out more about it!)
💪 Nutritional values: Gratitude, Mindfulness, Presence, Appreciation, Reflection
👥 Serves: 1 person, 11-25 people, 2-10 people
🎚 Difficulty: Easy
⏳ Total time: 1 day
🥣 Ingredients: 1 Alarm, 1 sheet of paper, 1 pen, “I am here now” booklet by The Mindfulness Project (if you’re curious to find out more about it!)
🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Awareness, Positive Emotion, Rest, Ritualising
💪 Wholebeing Skills: Celebration, Gratitude, Mindfulness, Optimism, Pausing, Presence, Ritualising, Self-awareness, Time management
The gratitude alarm
📝 Description
Hourly reminders to cultivate gratitude.
In their conversation in The Book of Joy, his Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu refer to gratefulness as one of the eight pillars to joy. They explain that “gratitude is the recognition of all that holds us in the web of life and all that has made it possible to have the life that we have and the moment that we are experiencing. It moves us away from the narrow-minded focus on fault and lack and to the wider perspective of benefit and abundance.”
The following activity, taken from the creative mindfulness booklet I am here now by The Mindfulness Project, offers a quick but constant practice to nurture the habit of gratefulness. You can do it by yourself, or why not, with your team at work.
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Important: We shared this recipe as part of our blog post “Wellbeing in the time of COVID-19” because it’s a simple but regular activity to cultivate gratitude. Naturally, take all needed precautions: for instance, keep at least 1 metre distance between you and other people.
This recipe has also been featured in our blog post “What time is it? It’s gratitude o’clock!” published on tbd* on 24 June 2020.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Set up the alarm (5’)
At the beginning of your day, set up your alarm to go off every hour for the next 12 hours. Take a sheet of paper and draw a big clock with the 12 hours on it.
Step 2 – Cultivate gratitude (5’)
Whenever the alarm goes off (once every hour for 12 hours), pause for a few minutes and jot down on your paper clock (in the corresponding hour), one small thing you are grateful for in that moment. It could be something related to whatever you were doing a moment before, or a sudden thought or memory that has come to mind.
If you are doing with this with your team at work, there are two main approaches:
- Let every team member fill in their own gratitude clock and take a few moments to share some of your results at the end of the working day (or at the beginning of the following morning).
- Have one team gratitude clock and at each hour, ask a different team member to share what they are grateful for at that moment.