In this solo YouTube episode of the 30‑Day Healthy Habits Challenge, Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, introduces a simple gratitude habit: each day write down one thing you’re grateful for. She explains why the habit matters, describing the brain’s negativity bias and how training it to notice positives can improve wellbeing, resilience, and stress management. Cheryl offers concrete examples of tiny moments of joy—from a cheap Alpine‑scene sticker on her desk to a new flower in the yard—to illustrate what can count as gratitude. She cites research that links daily gratitude journaling to better mental health and encourages viewers to write the entry by hand on paper, though she also mentions habit‑tracker or journaling apps as alternatives. Practical tips include doing the practice at the end of the day, keeping it brief, and optionally exploring the linked studies or deeper journal prompts. The overall message is that this tiny, repeatable action is an easy win that can shift perspective and foster lasting positive habits.
Chapters
Hey everyone, I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, and welcome to day 5 of the Healthy Habits Challenge. So today is a habit that I have tried many times in the past. I haven't always been able to get it to stick, but whenever I do it, I do find it really useful, and that is to develop a gratitude practice. But today, in the light of just, you know, we're just doing small habits, manageable habits, we're just going to write one thing. That we're grateful for today. That's it. One thing. And this is a challenge for some people because it's really, you know, you might have a day where you think that there was nothing good to appreciate, and I hope you don't have too many of those days. But what happens is our brain is kind of naturally wired to notice the negatives more than the positive. You know, our brain was evolved under this paradigm of like, there's a lot of danger in the world. You know, there's, uh, animals and things that we had to watch out for. And, you know, it's a lot different nowadays, but our brains are still wired in that way. And so it tends to go to the negative things first and not notice the positive things in life. So part of this habit is really changing the way that you look at everyday life and finding small joys. The way I like to look at finding things to be grateful for is it's not always this grand thing. I mean, yes, every day we could be grateful for having a roof over our head or having a job that pays us so that we can buy food and all those kinds of things. And those are probably the more obvious things that we're grateful for. Or maybe your, your friend did something nice for you that day, or your husband or your spouse or your partner did something that you really appreciated. So those are all kind of easy things to think of to be grateful for. But I have started finding some things in my day where there's just like these little moments of joy, and it's something that just brings a smile to my face and you know, makes me think in a more positive way. So for example, the first time I recorded this, cuz I, I lost, um, I lost some of the recordings. Unfortunately, I, there was no sound for some reason. Uh, but anyway, I have this silly little sticker on my desk. And so if you're not watching on YouTube, I'll describe it to you. It's just an alpine scene, retro with, uh, it says après on it, like for après-ski. And this little silly thing, it just made me smile. I was on Amazon looking for some Christmas things and I saw it and it's just a sticker. So it was very, very inexpensive and I bought it and it just brought me a little moment of joy. Now, this doesn't mean to say that it needs to be something that you buy because quite often it's other things like I'll notice a new flower comes out in our yard or something. I just take a moment to like really appreciate that and be grateful for it. Or trying to think of some other good examples or just appreciating a really good meal that you had or a good dish that you tried or You know, just little things like that, something that you cooked, especially if somebody else made it for you, then it's really something to be appreciated, right? So just finding those little joyful moments throughout your day can really help make this practice easier. And then if you decide again to take this on as a more serious practice, something that you're gonna maintain over time, and I do suggest that you try it because there's plenty of research backing, as I said, with all the habits, there's always something backing this up on why you wanna do it. But this one, the research really shows that it just helps with your overall wellbeing. It helps again, train your brain to look for wins instead of always looking at the negative. And then a gratitude practice can also shift your attention to what's working, which supports resilience and stress management and, you know, stress management, who doesn't need that, right? We could all use that. So just the fact that it improves overall wellbeing from this simple little practice of writing down what you're grateful for each day, uh, to me, it's, it's a no-brainer and I am really kind of mad at myself that I haven't been better about taking on this practice more seriously over time. Now I'd also say for this particular day that we're just writing this one thing that we're grateful for, I wanna encourage you to write it on a notepad or just hand to paper, write it instead of putting on your notes on your phone or instead of in your habit tracker, just because there is something very different about actually writing that affects your brain differently, I find. So just try that for today, actually writing it out. But you can also use, uh, I've recommended a couple of apps for you to try that are either the habit trackers or journaling, that kind of thing. And you can, so you can also write it in your app. And if that makes it easier for you to do this practice on a daily basis, then I would definitely, definitely use an app. But also a lot of people just like using an old school notebook or journal and just handwriting it down. The time that I was doing that for a while, I really did find that it shifted my perspective. It just made me feel a little more calm each day. So anyway, it's an easy win. Just do it at the end of your day. That way you can kind of take a moment to reflect on your day as well, which can often be a useful habit to have too. And yeah, so that's your goal for the day, is to write down one thing that you're grateful for. And as always, the show notes— or the— sorry, not the show notes, but the links are in the tracker and in your email. And so you can read about those studies that show how this gratitude practice works. And again, just as a reminder, those— that's always optional. But everyone, you find one of these habits kind of speaks to you, that might be the time to dig in and read a little bit of the research or to do the journal prompt at the end of the day so you can really explore like why you think this would help you and how it's helping you and that sort of thing. But those are all optional. Again, we're trying to keep this simple and repeatable and small wins. So you just do your one thing, your habit, you write it down, you know, it doesn't take too much time at all. And yeah, so start there, stick to that. But always, if you're inspired to do more, that's always encouraged too. So that's it for today. I will chat with you again tomorrow. Have a great night. Bye-bye.
