Gratitude and Creativity
Could these be the most important words you write this year?
Hello Protagonists,
Welcome back to Letters from the Creative Life. These occasional essays explore the quieter corners of living: small reflections on art, ambition, and the tender balancing act of building a meaningful life in a noisy world. Think of them as letters from our lives to yours. Enjoy!
xo,
Joanna & Evelyn
Gratitude and Creativity
Could these be the most important words you write this year?
Do you have room for one more writing resolution?
It won’t add too much to your word count goal or get in the way of you finishing a book. It’s simply to write down one thing you are grateful for each day.
I know, I know. The gratitude journal feels like a fad from the early 2000s, but let’s not toss it out with the flip phones and low-rise denim. As I explored the science, I found that this simple practice has been incredibly effective in enhancing people’s lives. And specifically, it might serve our creativity.
What is Gratitude?
My favorite definition of gratitude is the appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself. I like this description because it goes beyond a please-and-thank-you exchange between two people and expands the concept to include states of being and experiences. I am not only grateful when someone holds the door for me, but also for the fade from peach to lavender in the January twilight.
Gratitude illuminates our values. By practicing appreciation, we focus our attention on what is meaningful to us. And the more value we notice, the more value we can have in our lives.
Your Brain on Gratitude
Gratitude activates and strengthens parts of our brain that help us regulate the sympathetic nervous system, reducing our stress response, and increases helpful hormones to our well-being, like serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine.
The positive effects of gratitude include greater emotional and social well-being, better sleep quality, lower risk of depression, improved cardiovascular health, and generally not dying.
Science has just started to explore the connection between gratitude and creativity. Researchers have discovered links between gratitude, stress reduction, and pro-creativity outcomes such as reducing rigid thinking and increasing risk-taking and resilience. However, even more interesting to me is the overlapping skills between the practices.
Paying Attention
To be grateful and to make art, we must keenly notice the world around us. Paying attention is the first step of appreciation. When we appreciate art, we notice the fine distinctions and subtle qualities of a work. We see how the weather reflects the character’s emotional state in a film. We feel the use of negative space in the painting. We hear the layers of rhythm that run through a poem.
Gratitude and art offer a powerful symbiosis in our lives, expanding our capacity for specificity, flexing our descriptive powers, and challenging ourselves to see the world with fresh eyes. Mary Oliver said, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” And I ask, what do I want to devote myself to?
Entitlement and Wonder
I’ve learned that the inverse of gratitude is entitlement; instead of appreciating something of value, we can come to expect it. And when I feel entitled to an outcome, my creativity tanks.
When I first started writing fiction, I was filled with wonder. I reveled in the joy of having a story bloom from my mind, learning the elements of craft, and sharing my work with friends. But novel after novel, my wonder ebbed, and entitlement crept in.
I know plot structure, so why is this story not working?! I got an agent, so why is this book not selling? I have a block of time, so why are the words not flowing?! As I expected certain outcomes from myself and the world, I became jaded and angry with the writing and publishing process and needed to take a break. I had work to do, and only returned when my gratitude for the creative process resurfaced.
I now know that when I stop seeing the act of creating as a gift, I lose the inspiration for my art. Gratitude allows me to come to each page with fresh eyes, wondering what I might discover.
Gratitude and Goals
In this way, gratitude can support the pursuit of our other creative goals. Having big dreams is amazing, but sometimes, we can hyperfocus on these plans–finish the novel, get the agent, make the list–and lose contact with our creative flow. Appreciation can be of deep service in these moments by reducing our stress, boosting our resilience, and igniting our wonder.
A gratitude practice can help us remember the strength and support that got us to this moment and the creative abundance available to us right now. Practicing sensitivity to the meaningful things in our lives can ground us as we strive for our ambitious goals and give all our other dreams a better shot. In this way, expressions of gratitude could be the most important words we write.
The Practice
Gratitude is not a one-and-done sort of resolution. It’s a practice. And the more you practice, the more you change your brain and develop an enduring perspective on the world. But habits are hard to establish.
To be honest, I’ve started several gratitude journals over the years and haven’t consistently stuck with them. So I turned to the book, Atomic Habits, and asked what makes a practice transform into a habit. Here are four big elements:
Start small and specific.
Link the practice to an existing routine or trigger.
Make it attractive - do it with friends, make it beautiful.
Reward yourself.
So, in 2026, I am writing one thing I am grateful for each day as soon as I sit down at my desk in the morning.
I aim to make it as specific as possible. Not just: “I’m grateful for my family,” but rather “the sound of my daughter’s bark when she is pretending to be a dog.” Not just: “I’m grateful for nature,” but “the way sunlight moves through a bougainvillea petal.” Not just: “I’m grateful for writing,” but “the tingles up my spine when a symbol I established early in my novel effortlessly ties into a later chapter.”
Reading over my list from the past two weeks has been a reward in itself. Compared to my essays or novels, it’s an itty-bitty word count, but these words are my life. And look how beautiful my life can be if I notice. I might write gratitude letters later in the year to acknowledge the people and groups that have impacted my life, but right now this is my small, specific start.
Want to do it too?
If this idea inspired you, join me! Every Thursday, I will start a thread in our community chat, share one thing I am grateful for, and invite you all to do the same. I can’t wait to read what’s meaningful to you throughout the year. The more we practice, the more we notice the things of value to us, the more valuable our lives become. I am so grateful for this kind community committed to supporting one another and creating amazing things in our world.
Where might you need to shift from entitlement to appreciation?
Do you keep a gratitude journal?
What are you grateful for today?
The link between entitlement and creative stagnation is something I hadn't considered explicitly before, but it explains so much. When you expect certain outcomes - the agent, the book deal, the words flowing - you're no longer in dialogue with the work itself. You're measuring against an imagined endpoint rather than staying present with what's actually happening on the page.
Your point about specificity in gratitude practice mirrors what makes writing come alive. "The sound of my daughter's bark when she is pretending to be a dog" - that precision is what trains us to notice the telling details that make a scene or character feel real. Gratitude as a daily practice of detailed observation becomes a creative muscle-building exercise disguised as self-care.
The symbiosis you describe between gratitude and art makes sense: both require us to slow down enough to really see what's in front of us. In a way, gratitude journaling is like doing scales for the kind of attention creative work demands.
I have fallen off in my gratitude practice in the past year. And I'm suddenly wondering if that's part of why it feels so much harder to handle these heavy times. I'm all on board to start fresh with everyone here!