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If the concept of daily gratitude practice is new to you but makes you curious, this 7-day gratitude challenge I created will ease you into a new positive habit of being grateful!
Whether you came here inspired by Thanksgiving or just want to bring more positive energy into your life, you are up for a wonderful week!
Read on to find out what a 7-day gratitude challenge is all about and how to make the most of it!
What is a gratitude challenge?
A 7-day gratitude challenge is an easy week-long challenge filled with different gratitude activities. Its main goal is to introduce you to the attitude of gratitude and the concept of feeling grateful for what you have, which is scientifically proven to improve your life in numerous ways.
For each day of this challenge, I give you one thing to do to become more grateful.
You can of course just write 3 things you are grateful for every day for 7 days and make it your own gratitude challenge. Or make it 10 things per day so it actually feels challenging!
But I wanted to show you different ways to put yourself in a state of gratitude, so you have some fun with it and don’t get bored!
Why participate in a 7-day gratitude challenge?
Because of all the ways in which gratitude makes your life better!
From boosting your health to improving your relationships, studies show lots of benefits you can get from daily gratitude practice.
Here is a short fun video about the feeling of appreciation that may give you an idea:
This 7-day gratitude challenge is self-paced and relatively easy.
Start it on Monday along with your mindfulness activities or on any other day when you feel like it! Best of all, start today!
It only has one task per day which shouldn’t take too much of your time.
If you follow the challenge for all 7 days, you’ll get closer to creating a habit of daily gratitude which will be beneficial for the rest of your life!
How to prepare for a 7-day gratitude challenge
So there are a couple of things you can do to prepare for a 7-day gratitude challenge:
- Set your intention. Start this challenge with a positive mindset and open mind!
- Find an accountability partner. Every challenge is easier and more fun when done with a friend! Everyone around you would probably benefit from taking this challenge with you, so don’t hesitate to offer!
- Don’t make it a big deal. The attitude of gratitude should become an easy part of your normal lifestyle, not just this big scary challenge that you go through once and completely forget about.
Go into day one with the idea that you’ll become more thankful for everything you have in your life and that it will help you tune your mental state into gratitude!
With that said, here are the rules and activities for a 7-day gratitude challenge!
7-Day Gratitude Challenge
Day 1: Write down 3 to 5 things you are grateful for
So the task for the first day is the simplest: write down 3 to 5 things you feel grateful for.
You can refer to my ultimate gratitude list of 100 things if you want but usually coming up with 3 things to be thankful for is very easy! Start with good people in your life or basic things like water that keep you alive.
Gratitude journaling is the most common way to practice being grateful every day, and you can make it as flexible as you want!
There are many nice gratitude journals with prompts that will give you gratitude-related questions to fill in every day. Some of them will just give you space to fill 1 to 5 things you are grateful for, just as you need to do for this exercise, and that’s it!
One of the most popular gratitude journals is The Five Minute Journal which is endorsed by famous entrepreneurs like Tim Ferris and others. It has a couple of prompts to fill in the morning and another couple before bed, so you stay mindful and grateful all day long. It lets you set the intention for each day with positive affirmations and then reflect on how the day went in the evening.
If you don’t want to be limited by a prompted journal in any way, you can grab any blank notebook that inspires you and just use gratitude prompts like these!
Start with choosing a journal and writing 3 things you feel especially thankful for today.
Outside of this challenge, I recommend doing this exercise every day. It doesn’t take much time and it teaches you to see more beautiful things in your life and appreciate them as they deserve. Challenge yourself to write different things every day, as it will make you notice more and more good things around you!
Day 2: Send a gratitude message to someone you love

Day two is about expressing gratitude, not just feeling it.
One of the easiest ways to show your appreciation to someone is by putting it into words.
In the old times, you had to write a letter and go to a post office to send it. Today you can just write someone a message on your phone and it’ll be received instantly!
Technology makes our lives so much easier, which is also a good reason to feel grateful!
Choose someone who was kind to you, a friend who is always there for you, or just a person you love. And take a minute of your day to say something nice to them.
As much as the Internet is cool, receiving a postcard will feel much more special compared to an instant message, so consider it too!
You can also make this exercise a weekly practice and switch up people you appreciate and ways you show it to them.
Day 3: Start your day with gratitude affirmations
Day three has another simple task that will raise your vibration and put you in the attitude of gratitude!
Choose a few affirmations for today and repeat them during the whole day to keep yourself in a grateful mood. Let these grateful thoughts be the first ones that you wake up with and the last ones you catch before you fall asleep at night.
You can select some statements that speak to you from my list of gratitude affirmations or Thanksgiving affirmations. Or write your own affirmations that might feel even more personal and powerful by following these simple rules!
Positive affirmations are amazing when you need to shift your mindset and focus on the positive things you have in your life. They help eliminate negative thoughts and bring you back whenever you fall into old ungrateful thinking patterns.
I love to use positive affirmations for every cause as they provide an extra level of support, whatever you are dealing with! For example, productivity affirmations make you more effective at work and confidence affirmations raise your self-esteem to help you achieve success.
Share in the comments which gratitude affirmations you choose for your Day 3 of this 7-day challenge!
Day 4: Create your own alphabet of gratitude
Right in the middle of the gratitude challenge, there is a fun task for you: to write your own A to Z list of things to be grateful for!
As opposed to a simple list from day 1, this one challenges you to be more creative and think outside of the traditional family-health-nature cycle of gratitude. You can even repeat a few creativity affirmations before starting this exercise to put yourself in a brainstorming mood!
So grab a piece of paper or your gratitude notebook and write down an alphabet in a vertical column. Then for each letter find something that starts with this letter and deserves being grateful for!
Sounds easy, right? But you’ll be surprised how many everyday words actually start with the same letters! And there are a bunch of tricky letters in the alphabet that don’t own a lot of nice nouns.
If you need help with any letter, refer to my example gratitude alphabet! It also has tips for filling your own A to Z gratitude list, which you may find very helpful for conquering this day’s task.
Day 5: Do a random act of kindness
This is another activity that involves expressing gratitude to the outside world.
I don’t have any limitations or directions for this particular exercise, just do something that feels right for you! It can be buying a little surprise for a friend or your child, feeding a hungry person on the street, or doing a nice favor to someone you know.
If you can’t come up with anything today, google “random acts of kindness” and you’ll see tons of ways to share your gratitude! Find one that is simple but meaningful to you, and maybe will improve somebody’s life.
If you still have no idea what to do after that, donate something to a charity of your choice. If anything, it doesn’t have to be money: your time, kindness, or clothes you don’t wear anymore can go a long way.
Day 6: Listen to a guided gratitude meditation
Our task for day 6 is to meditate on the feeling of gratitude!
If you meditate daily anyway, just make gratitude your focus feeling for today.
If you aren’t used to meditating, don’t worry: just listen to a guided one you can find online for free. Try to focus on the words and not get distracted with your thoughts. But even if you do, don’t stress about it: just gently bring your focus back to listening.
There are lots of gratitude-related meditations on Youtube: choose one that makes you feel good when you listen to it! It is supposed to relax you and expand your heart with lots of gratitude toward your life and all kinds of things in it.
Here is my favorite gratitude meditation that I absolutely love! It makes you realize how much you are taking for granted. Seems like a good fit for day 6 of our 7-day gratitude challenge!
Day 7: Write a list of 100 things you are thankful for
Yes, the final task of our gratitude challenge is a big one.
Well, it won’t be a challenge if it weren’t at least a little bit challenging, right?
Other tasks were relatively easy and I gave you a day of relaxing with a guided meditation before climbing this last mountain. So give it all you got, it’s the last day of the challenge!
Imagine how much gratitude you’ll feel inside when you finish your list of 100 things you are thankful for!
You can refer to my own gratitude list of 100 things if you need some inspiration and encouragement. As I did this myself, I can assure you it’s not as hard as you may think!
Let me know in the comments which day was the most challenging for you and what feelings you experienced in the process!
Don’t stop with a 7-day gratitude challenge!
As I mentioned in the beginning, this challenge is not meant to be done and forgotten.
When you are done with day 7, use the momentum to keep going and build a habit of daily gratitude!
You can make it a 21-day challenge by repeating all the activities three times. Or add these exercises to your weekly routine to keep yourself in the attitude of gratitude.
If you stick to daily practice, it will soon become a natural part of your day. And a state of being grateful will feel more natural and effortless.
Thank you for being here, and hope you enjoy this 7-day gratitude challenge!
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I just found you and am so grateful! As a therapist I now have another resource for my clients.
Thank you thank you thank you
Thank you so much, Kimberly, comments like yours make me very happy!
Starting the morning with gratitude has been so helpful in my overall mood! I love your ” a to z” idea, I’ll have to try out and see how it goes.. Can’t wait to try out this thought provoking challenge!
Thank you Rose, I’m glad it is helpful! Morning thoughts can be really impactful on your whole day’s mood, so I’m always trying to focus on the positive, count my blessings, and keep myself in a good vibe for the day.