Gratitude Journal Prompts: What to Write, From the Studies Themselves
Updated: 1 day ago
The most common reason people give for stalling on a gratitude journal is not lack of time. It is the blank line. You sit down, write "my family" for the tenth night running, and wonder what the point is.
There is a better source for prompts than a listicle: the instructions researchers actually gave people in gratitude studies, and the example entries they published. Those examples are surprisingly ordinary, which is the most useful thing about them.
The original instruction
In their 2003 experiments, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough gave participants this prompt:
"There are many things in our lives, both large and small, that we might be grateful about. Think back over the past week and write down on the lines below up to five things in your life that you are grateful or thankful for."
Three things stand out. It says large and small. It points you backward over a specific stretch of time. And it caps the list, up to five, so nobody feels they have to fill a page.
The famous Three Good Things exercise, tested by Martin Seligman and colleagues in American Psychologist in 2005, adds one more ingredient. Participants wrote "three things that went well each day and their causes," and gave a causal explanation for each. The why is part of the prompt.
What people actually wrote
The two Emmons and McCullough studies that list examples, plus a 2005 paper by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Kennon Sheldon and David Schkade in the Review of General Psychology, quote twelve real entries between them:
"waking up this morning"
"the generosity of friends"
"to God for giving me determination"
"for wonderful parents"
"to the Lord for just another day"
"to the Rolling Stones"
"grateful to my boss for understanding my needs"
"to my gardener"
"to my paperboy for being so reliable"
"a healthy body"
"my mom"
"AOL instant messenger"
We sorted the twelve into rough groups. This is our own coding of a tiny, hand-picked set, so read it as an illustration rather than a statistic.
A specific person: friends, parents, boss, gardener, paperboy, mom. That is 6 of 12, or 50 percent.
Faith: the two entries thanking God or the Lord. 2 of 12, about 17 percent.
Being alive and well: waking up, a healthy body. 2 of 12, about 17 percent.
Things you enjoy: the Rolling Stones, an instant messaging program. 2 of 12, about 17 percent.
Two lessons fall out of the count. Half of the entries named a person, and several named people at the edge of daily life, like a gardener or a paperboy. And a chat program made the published list right alongside parents and faith. Nothing is too small or too silly to count.
Why variety matters
Lyubomirsky and her coauthors make a point that every long-term journaler eventually feels. Counting the same blessings in a nonvarying routine can get boring and stop producing meaning. They suggest varying the areas of life you count blessings in, such as relationships, work, health or your most recent success, to keep the practice fresh.
In their six-week study, students who counted blessings once a week showed well-being gains relative to controls, while those doing it three times a week did not. The authors suspected staleness. Prompts that push you into different corners of your life are one way around that.
Twenty prompts, built from the research
Each of these follows one of the patterns above: large and small, a specific time window, a specific person, a cause, or a new area of life.
What is one small thing that went right today?
Who made today a little easier, even without knowing it?
What went well today, and why do you think it happened?
What is something your body let you do today?
What did you eat today that you actually enjoyed?
What made you laugh this week?
Who is someone you see often but rarely think about, like a neighbor or a bus driver?
What is a song, show or book you are glad exists?
What is one thing at work that went better than expected?
What did you see outside today that was worth noticing?
What is a problem that turned out smaller than you feared?
What is something you have now that you once hoped for?
Who taught you something you still use?
What part of your morning do you like most?
What is a recent success, however minor?
What comfort did you take for granted today?
What is something kind someone did for you recently?
What is something kind you did, and how did it feel?
What moment today would you happily repeat?
What is one good thing about tomorrow?
You do not need all twenty. Pick one when you are stuck, and keep it short. One line is plenty.
Letting the prompt come to you
The other way to beat the blank line is to stop facing it alone. Gratitude Textapp is an AI journal that works over text. Each evening at 8pm, or a time you choose, it sends a short prompt asking for one to three things you are grateful for, small things included. You reply in your own words, it saves the entry, and it answers with one short line that picks up what you wrote.
App (8pm): Gratitude time from your AI journal: What's something good, big or small, from today?
You: my kids laughing at dinner, a long walk
App: Kids laughing at dinner and a long walk, those small joys add up.
Over time, you can ask it what you are most often grateful for, and it will tell you your themes, such as family, nature or food. If one area keeps coming up and others never do, that is a nudge to try a prompt from a different corner of the list above. You can also ask it to show you a good moment from a past entry.
It is an AI, not a person or a therapist, and it can get things wrong. It is a wellness journal, not mental health care.
Try it by text
Text Hi to (872) 999-4985. From then on, each evening it texts you a gratitude prompt, and you reply with a few words about what went well. Ask it to change the time whenever you like, and if you already wrote that day it skips the prompt.
It works on any phone that can text, with no app and no account to set up. Your first 20 messages are free, and then one $9.99/month subscription covers every Textapp. Entries are stored by Textapp to run your journal and are not shared or sold. Message and data rates may apply. Text STOP to end messages at any time. Details at textapp.co/apps/gratitude.
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