Four lessons from one gratitude picture a day
Debbie Gutfreund
Here’s a transformational gratitude challenge to try with your friends and family. Create a small WhatsApp group and each day members post one photo of something they’re grateful for.
I am part of Whatsapp group doing this and the impact is immediate. The act of looking for one good thing sharpens your eyes to beauty and kindness you’ve been overlooking. Judaism calls this hakarat hatov (recognizing the good), and this quick daily practice trains you to do exactly that.
Here are four lessons I learned from this gratitude challenge.
1. Change what you see.
After posting a picture of something we were grateful for that day, I was pleasantly surprised to notice many more beautiful things around me. A common thread between some of our pics was suddenly noticing a beautiful tree or sunrise right outside our homes that we had seen hundreds of times before and never really noticed. Choosing to really look at the beauty around me changed what I saw. And the more I chose to see goodness around me, the more goodness I discovered.
2. Witnessing the gratitude of others
makes me feel more grateful.
It isn’t just my own moments of gratitude that help me appreciate my life, seeing other people’s gratitude does too. When friends in our chat share a picture of something they’re thankful for, it instantly expands my own sense of appreciation. Their posts prompt me to think of even more things I’m grateful for, and make me feel more connected to everyone in the group. Gratitude is contagious. The more gratitude I hear and see around me, the more blessed I feel.
3. Finding something to appreciate today changes how I think about tomorrow.
Expressing gratitude doesn’t just shift how I feel in the moment—it also changes how I look toward the future. Posting a gratitude picture each day makes me look forward to tomorrow with more hope and enthusiasm. When I train myself to find something beautiful or meaningful today, I begin to trust that I’ll be able to find something good again tomorrow. This simple daily practice becomes a self-reinforcing cycle of hope.
4. I can find something to be grateful for even on my hardest days.
I’m often surprised to find something beautiful or meaningful even on my most difficult days. Sometimes posting the picture lifts my spirits; other times my mood doesn’t change at all. But I learn that I can be grateful and frustrated at the same time. I can even be grateful and sad at the same time. I don’t need to pretend I’m happy or that everything in my life is perfect in order to express gratitude. Finding one thing to appreciate works, no matter what kind of day I’m having.
Taking a daily gratitude picture motivated me to search for and notice the goodness in my life every day. Start your Whatsapp group and try taking one gratitude picture today. You may find yourself discovering blessings in your life that you didn’t even realize were there.
Debbie Gutfreund is an OCD and trauma therapist. She holds a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA in Family Therapy from the University of North Texas. In her free time, she is a competitive runner and skier. She lives in Parkland, Florida with her husband and children.
