February 12th is the first day of the 12th luni-solar month and thus the start of a new challenge for me. This one is inspired by two sources. The first is a book I have been reading religiously the last few weeks titled Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff, in which she mentions the power gratitude has in tricking your mind to be happy, because practicing gratitude and experiencing pleasure have similar pathways in the brain. Of course, gratitude is also beneficial in its own right and the book suggested starting a gratitude journal.

The second source is the podcast Secular Buddhism by Noah Rasheta. In episode 26, entitled ‘Want to be happy? Practice Gratitude’, Noah talked about the power of gratitude in everyday life and challenged his listeners to 10 days of intentionally expressing gratitude to at least one person per day. Buddhism and self-compassion both heavily involve mindfulness, which is defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn as awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. I feel like gossip in many contexts can be the epitome of non-mindfulness, and it made sense to pair practicing gratitude with avoiding gossip.

Both gratitude and gossip need to be defined in order to effectively meet this challenge. Gratitude: the thankful appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself. Gossip: casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true.

So without further ado, let me define the parameters of the challenges. I’ll start with the daily gratitude agenda:

• One gratitude journal entry per day in Gratitude app on phone – I recently downloaded an app called Gratitude: Journal, Affirmations & Vision Board. I’m interested in the affirmations and vision board as well, but this month will be focusing on the journaling part. It gives you prompts to help you out and allows uploading pictures along with your entries. I prefer this over a physical journal, since I can use voice dictation.
• One expression of gratitude to another human being per day – Every day I will find at least one person to whom I will express gratefulness for something. I may not always be able to practice this in the most organic fashion, but I want to exercise my gratitude muscles so they can be more easily used in any situation naturally.
• One self-expression of gratitude per day – This one is fairly self-explanatory. The one thing I will add is that I need to say it out loud, not just think it inside my head. This helps actualize my intention so I can experience the full benefits of practicing gratitude.
• One non-human expression of gratitude – This may seem a little silly, but it was mentioned in a recent podcast so I thought I would try it out. Basically, this means expressing gratitude to (not about) a plant, animal, or inanimate object (your car, shoes, etc.). For example: “Toe shoes, thank you for being so comfortable and functional for my feet; it would be difficult to operate without you.”

Now onto the gossip challenge:

• Avoid talking about people not present if no pressing need to do so
• Use only neutral language (non-judgment-laden), tone of voice, and body language when talking about others who are not present
• Avoid listening to any news commentary (headlines only) and discussing news or politics with others
• Don’t affirm or deny other people when they gossip; just be non-responsive and switch the conversation to be more present-focused when able to do so

That’s it folks. I’m looking forward to starting a new challenge. After my meditation practice this morning, I experienced a giddy sense of excitement that today was the last day of the month and I would be starting a brand new adventure tomorrow. If you feel you could use more gratitude and/or less gossip in your life, I encourage you to take this challenge with me or create a simpler challenge such as writing down something your are grateful for every day for a week.

Namaste.