Creating Fabulous, Fun, and Fruitful Gratitudes

How successful have you been at writing gratitudes?¹ I hope you have a consistent practice for observing things to be grateful for and then writing them down. If not, no worries. You can start a gratitude practice today! :)

Personally, I’ve been using a Monthly Gratitude Calendar and that works well for me. Occasionally I enjoy writing more detail in a Gratitude Journal. Recently, I thought of a new exercise that I’ll share with you here today.

I rather accidentally began naming things that I’m grateful for and I noticed that many of them started with the letter ‘F.’ That amused me enough that I decided to try to list even more things that begin with the letter ‘F’ that I’m grateful for.

My initial list was fairly broad and included words that were quite general:

• Friends

• Family

• Felines

• Flutes

• Flowers

• Fun

• Freedom

• Faith

• Food

When I began thinking about what else begins with ‘F’ that I’m grateful for, the list included more specific items:

• Fathers

• F# Native American flutes

• Forests

• Feelings

• Focus

• French fries

• Figs

• Feet

• Faucets

• Feathers

• Funnies

I was surprised at some of the less inspiring ones, like figs, faucets, and feet, but when I thought about those more closely, I realized that there is a lot of reason to be grateful for those things. Our fig tree is doing well this year and I’m excited about the figs that will be ripe soon. Faucets don’t seem exciting until I imagine life without them. Feet also don’t seem very exciting, either, but mine work well and I’m quite appreciative of that fact! :)

Just because I was having fun and didn’t want to stop, I asked an AI tool to give me a list of things that, in general, people might be grateful for that start with the letter ‘F’. From that list, I garnered even more ideas:

• Forgiveness

• Fitness

• Fire

• Fulfillment

• Fairness

• Flexibility

• Fellowship

• Frugality

• Fearlessness

• Farms

I didn’t spend a lot of time on this exercise, but even in a short time, I was able to create a relatively lengthy list. What I noticed about this exercise is that the constraint of using only ‘F’ as the first letter forced me to be more creative about my choices and that helped me to stumble upon items that have not (yet, at least) made it onto my Monthly Gratitude Calendar or into my Gratitude Journal.

If you’re finding that you seem to be writing the same (or similar) items for your gratitude practice, try this exercise. You can choose a letter randomly or, as I did, write a few gratitudes and notice which letter pops up often for you. Write as many things with that letter as you can.

If you are really stuck and don’t know where to begin, choose the letter ‘F’. It’s not cheating to copy from my list. ;) But, if you do, make it your own and add whatever specific items come to mind.

Perhaps you will uncover some surprises in your list, as well. :)

1. If you’re unfamiliar with what I mean by “gratitudes,” review some of my earlier posts that describe how to write a gratitude.