If you’ve been following Flourishing Fiercely for a while, you’ve probably tried gratitude journaling. Maybe you’ve listed three things you’re grateful for before bed, or started your day by noting something good. These practices are valuable, they’re research-backed and effective. But sometimes we need fresh approaches, especially if our gratitude practice has started to feel routine or obligatory. In my last post, we explored how gratitude practices can literally extend our lives, backed by groundbreaking research from Harvard Medical School showing a 9% reduction in mortality risk among those who regularly practice gratitude.
Today, I want to share five evidence-based practices that can deepen and sustain your gratitude journey, particularly for those of us doing mission-driven work who need sustainable ways to stay grounded, healthy, and whole for the long haul.
1. Savoring Exercises
Savoring is the practice of pausing to fully take in and enjoy what’s good in your current setting. Unlike gratitude journaling, which often happens in reflection, savoring happens in real time. It’s about extending positive experiences rather than just noting them. Research shows that savoring increases positive emotions and overall wellbeing. It trains our brains to not just recognize good things but to really absorb them, letting them shape our neural pathways and emotional baseline. Here’s how to practice: When something good happens, a warm conversation, a beautiful moment in nature, a small victory at work, pause for 30 seconds to three minutes. Don’t rush to the next thing. Notice the sensations in your body. Pay attention to the details. Think, “I don’t want to forget this.” Let yourself fully experience the goodness of this moment.
For busy leaders who struggle with traditional journaling, savoring meets you where you are. It doesn’t require a notebook or a quiet space. It just requires a willingness to pause and truly be present to the good that’s already there.
2. Gratitude Letters
This practice has some of the most robust research behind it. Writing a gratitude letter, a detailed message to someone who has positively impacted your life, creates lasting increases in happiness and decreases in depression, with effects that can last for months. You don’t have to send the letter (though doing so deepens the impact even more). The act of writing it, of really reflecting on how someone influenced you, of putting your appreciation into specific words, is transformative in itself. Think of someone who shaped your journey: a mentor, a teacher, a friend who believed in you during a difficult season, a colleague who supported you in ways that changed your trajectory. Write to them. Be specific about what they did and how it impacted you. Describe the ripple effects of their kindness or wisdom in your life.
3. The Gratitude Walk
We know movement is good for mental health. We know gratitude is good for wellbeing. Combining them creates something powerful. A gratitude walk is simple: go for a walk (even 10 to 15 minutes works) with the specific intention of noticing things you’re grateful for along the way. This isn’t about forcing positivity, it’s about paying attention differently. As you walk, notice what catches your attention: the neighbor who waves hello, the fact that your body can move, the trees that provide shade, the friend you’re thinking of texting, the community you live in. You don’t have to journal about it or even name it all out loud. Just notice. Let gratitude shape your awareness.
This practice is especially valuable for busy leaders who struggle to sit still long enough to journal. It meets you where you are, in motion, and transforms an activity you’re likely already doing into a gratitude practice.
4. Team and Organizational Gratitude Rituals
Gratitude doesn’t have to be solitary. In fact, shared gratitude practices can strengthen teams and deepen community in ways that individual practices cannot. Consider starting meetings with two minutes of appreciations. End your week with a team gratitude share. What’s one thing you’re grateful for about this week’s work? Create a dedicated Slack channel or shared document where people can post appreciations for colleagues. These practices don’t just benefit individuals, they shape culture. They create spaces where people feel seen, valued, and connected to collective purpose. And they model for others that gratitude is not peripheral but central to sustainable, effective work.
Our team does this at the beginning of each staff meeting as we celebrate our colleagues for work over the previous month. We also encourage sharing more than professional wins. We want people to share personal wins and wins for their family. This practice has transformed our team culture. It’s created a space where we genuinely see each other, not just as colleagues but as whole people with full lives. It’s deepened trust, strengthened relationships and created a foundation of appreciation that sustains us through challenging seasons. When we’re navigating difficult decisions or facing organizational challenges, that foundation of gratitude becomes a stabilizing force. We remember we’re in this together. We remember why we chose this work. We remember the goodness that exists even when things are hard.
5. The Practice of “And”
I shared this briefly in my last post, but it deserves deeper exploration because it might be the most important practice of all: learning to hold gratitude alongside difficulty, not instead of it. This isn’t about toxic positivity or forced cheerfulness. It’s about “and” statements. “This is really hard AND I’m grateful for the people walking through it with me.” “This project is overwhelming AND I’m grateful I get to do work that matters.” “This season is depleting me AND I’m grateful for the moments of rest I’m finding.” The “and” allows us to be honest about struggle while staying connected to sustaining truths. It gives us permission to not be okay while also acknowledging what’s holding us together.
I’ve needed this practice. During organizational transitions, when resources were scarce, when decisions felt impossible, those were not times to pretend everything was fine. But they were times to notice: I’m grateful for my team’s resilience. I’m grateful for the mission we serve. I’m grateful for the small signs of hope emerging even in hard ground. This kind of gratitude doesn’t erase pain. It provides grounding. It reminds us that even in difficulty, we’re not alone and good things haven’t disappeared, they’re just harder to see. Gratitude becomes the practice of choosing to keep looking.
For those of us in mission-driven work, this practice is essential. We often carry heavy things. We’re intimately familiar with the cost of compassion, the weight of caring deeply and the exhaustion that comes from showing up for work that matters. We need practices that don’t ask us to deny that reality but instead help us navigate it with more groundedness and grace.
Making It Sustainable
You don’t have to do all five practices. You don’t have to overhaul your life. Start with one. Choose the practice that feels most accessible right now. Try it for seven days and notice what shifts. Maybe it’s a three-minute savoring pause during your lunch break. Maybe it’s a gratitude walk on Saturday morning. Maybe it’s writing one letter to someone who shaped your path. Maybe it’s simply practicing “and” statements when things get hard. Whatever you choose, know this: you’re not just creating a feel-good moment. You’re building something that can sustain you. You’re investing in your health, your longevity, and your capacity to keep showing up for what matters most.
As I mentioned in my previous post about nurturing purpose through seasons of burnout, sustainable leadership requires intentional practices that refill us. Gratitude is one of those practices. It’s not a luxury. It’s a necessity for anyone committed to the long game of mission-driven work.
The Science Behind the Practice
The research is compelling. The Harvard study I referenced in my last post showed a 9% reduction in mortality risk. But gratitude’s benefits extend far beyond longevity.
Studies show that regular gratitude practices reduce stress hormones, lower inflammation, improve sleep quality and strengthen immune function. For healthcare workers facing burnout, gratitude journaling has been shown to significantly decrease stress and exhaustion, with effects lasting months after the intervention.
We’re not just talking about feeling better. We’re talking about practices that change our biology, our health and our capacity to sustain purpose-driven work over decades.
For those of us who carry the weight of mission-driven work, who navigate compassion fatigue and secondary trauma, who care deeply about outcomes that often feel beyond our control, these practices offer more than temporary relief. They offer a pathway to sustainability.
Pause and consider:
- Which of the five practices shared today feels most accessible to you right now? What’s one small way you could try it this week?
- What barriers have you faced in maintaining a gratitude practice? How might one of these fresh approaches address those barriers?
- If you were to write a gratitude letter, who would you write to? What would you want them to know about how they’ve impacted your life?
- How might shared gratitude practices strengthen your team or organization? What would it look like to introduce one of these practices in your workplace?
Take One Action
Choose ONE gratitude practice from this post to try for the next seven days. Don’t overthink it, just pick the one that resonated most. At the end of the week, journal briefly about what you noticed. What challenged you? What surprised you? What do you want to continue?
Share Your Journey
I’d love to hear from you in the comments: Which practice are you going to try? What’s drawing you to that particular practice? What do you hope to discover or experience through it?
And if you found this helpful, share it with someone else who’s navigating the beautiful, hard work of leading and serving with purpose. Sometimes the most sustaining thing we can do is remind each other that we’re not alone in this journey.
Remember, gratitude isn’t about adding more to your plate. It’s about sustaining what’s already there, about staying healthy and whole so you can continue showing up for the work you’re called to do. These practices are investments in your long-term capacity to flourish, even as you navigate the inevitable challenges of mission-driven work.