Growing in Gratitude: Three Simple Practices That Will Change Your Home

“In daily life, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” — Brother David Steindl-Rast

Not long ago I stood in front of nearly 100 women at a Wise Women Luncheon and asked a simple question:

“Are you grateful?”

Almost every hand in the room went up. Ninety percent of those beautiful, accomplished, hardworking women considered themselves grateful people.

Then I asked the follow-up questions — how do you express gratitude? How do you cultivate it? How are you raising grateful kids?

The hands got quieter.

What emerged in that room was something I see again and again: a real and honest gap between feeling grateful and actually living gratitude out loud. Most of us carry a general sense of thankfulness somewhere inside us. But very few of us are intentional about practicing it — giving it a home in our daily rhythms, our family routines, our relationships.

And that gap costs us more than we realize.

What Gratitude Actually Is

Before we can grow in something, it helps to understand what it actually is.

Is gratitude an emotion? A virtue? A behavior?

The Cambridge Dictionary defines it simply as a strong feeling of appreciation toward someone or something for what they have done. But researchers Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough — two of the leading voices in gratitude science — take it a step further. They describe gratitude as a two-step process: first, an affirmation of goodness in our lives, and second, a recognition that the source of that goodness comes from outside ourselves.

In other words, gratitude is not just a warm feeling. It is an orientation — a way of seeing that acknowledges we are recipients of something we did not earn or manufacture on our own.

For the woman of faith, that recognition has a name. And His generosity is the foundation everything else is built on.

What we also know from decades of research is this: gratitude is something we can learn. It is not a personality trait you either have or don’t have. It is a practice — and like any practice, it grows with intentional repetition.

As Brother David Steindl-Rast reminds us, we’ve had the equation backwards all along. We don’t become grateful when life gets good. Life begins to feel good when we become grateful.

Three Practices — A Simple Progression

Rather than choosing just one of these and setting the others aside, I want to invite you into all three — as a gentle progression that moves from inward to outward to generational.

Start where you are. Go at your own pace. And give yourself the same grace you’d give a friend.

If you want a guided framework to support your gratitude practice, the 3-Simple Gratitude Practices Guide will support you through this step-by-step — free, and ready to download today.

Step One: The Morning Gratitude Stretch — Inward

Dr. Robert Emmons makes a striking observation in his research: you cannot feel envious and grateful at the same time. They are incompatible. Gratitude and resentment cannot occupy the same space simultaneously.

Which means the simple act of beginning your morning with gratitude is actually a form of protection — a quiet guard against the anxiety and comparison that can so easily hijack a day before it even starts.

Before your mind is flooded with notifications, needs, and the weight of everything on your list — pause. Just a few minutes. It doesn’t have to be elaborate.

You could do it over your first cup of coffee, in the car before you walk into the office, or in those stolen minutes before the first little feet hit the floor. Mentally name three things you are grateful for. If you want to go deeper, grab an inexpensive journal and write them down — something as simple as the sound of your kids’ laughter the night before, or the fact that the furnace kicked on this morning.

As you name each one, close your eyes for ten seconds. Breathe. Savor it. Let it be real before you move on.

Writing it down matters more than it seems. The act of putting words on a page redirects your attention — not just to what you are grateful for, but to whom. And that shift is where the transformation begins.

This pairs beautifully with the daily morning rhythm practices in the Daily Rhythms for Christian Moms post — if you haven’t read that one yet, it’s worth the few minutes.

Step Two: Make Gratitude a Family Affair — Outward

Researcher Amy Morin found something worth sitting with: while 85% of parents regularly prompted their children to say “thank you,” only 39% encouraged their kids to show gratitude in a way that went beyond good manners.

We are teaching our children the language of gratitude. But are we teaching them the practice of it?

This season, consider starting a family gratitude tradition — something simple enough to actually sustain, and meaningful enough to look forward to.

Once a day or once a week, gather your family and invite each person to share one thing they are grateful for. The warmth of a cozy blanket. The lights on the tree. A funny moment from school. The smell of something good coming from the kitchen.

You can be the scribe and keep a running family gratitude journal. Or give each child their own inexpensive notebook — let the little ones decorate the covers with stickers and magazine cutouts, let older kids write or draw whatever captures their gratitude that week.

The key is what happens after everyone writes: share out loud. Talking about what we are grateful for causes the imprint to go deeper. It moves gratitude from a private thought into a shared experience — and shared experiences shape family culture in ways that quiet, individual practices simply cannot.

Watch what happens to the atmosphere in your home when this becomes a rhythm. Come share what your family comes up with in the Mom2Mom Mentoring Facebook Group — a community of women building these kinds of intentional family rhythms together.

Step Three: Responding With Gratitude — Generational

In a 2020 study, researcher Dan Tomasulo had college students write notes of gratitude regularly. The results were striking — not only did the writers’ happiness increase, their depression scores dropped for at least a month following the practice.

I can confirm this from years of personal experience.

For as long as I can remember, I have woven notes of appreciation into my weekly rhythm. A handwritten note to a friend. A text to someone I’ve been thinking about. A card slipped into a mailbox. Every single time, I walk away feeling more alive than before I sat down to write.

That is not a coincidence. Gratitude expressed outward — toward a specific person, for a specific reason — does something in the writer that a private gratitude list simply cannot replicate. It forces us to slow down, think carefully about another person, and articulate what they mean to us.

This is the kind of gratitude that gets passed down. That your children watch and absorb. That becomes part of who your family is — long after the holiday decorations come down.

Your Gratitude Growing Plan

Here is the progression, simple and doable:

This week — Begin the Morning Gratitude Stretch. Three things, ten seconds each, before the day takes over.

This month — Start a family gratitude practice. One night a week, one thing each. Watch the room change.

This season — Write one note of appreciation per week to someone in your life. Put it in the mail. Send the text. Make the call.

And if you want a guided companion for the journey, the3-Simple Gratitude Practices is a free, beautifully simple resource designed to help you build this practice one day at a time — with grace, not pressure.

👉Gratitude Practices Free Download

Who is one person you could write a note of gratitude to this week?