Happy 10 Years To The Little Journal That Started It All! 

Ten years ago this month I did something that would change my life forever. I wrote, designed, and published a gratitude journal. 

I had been practicing gratitude for a little over a year and when my health coaching school created a contest to win a conference in Costa Rica, I knew I wanted to enter.  

So one snowy day in March 2011, I got together with one of my best health coach friends and we talked through our ideas for participating in a 60-Day Challenge through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN). The goal of the challenge was to create a program or project to help propel our business forward. One hundred lucky students and alumni would be invited to attend a special conference in Costa Rica. 

I had a number of ideas, most of which involved food, recipes, and meal plans, but when Joshua Rosenthal, the Founder of IIN, said we should think about what has helped up the most in our own healing journey, my gratitude practice quickly came to mind. Being a graphic designer with lots of publishing experience, I knew I had wanted to someday create a journal specifically for practicing gratitude. When I shared this idea with my friend, she said, “Do  THAT.” 

She said, “Your face lights up when you talk about it.”  

And so I did.  

My 60-day challenge was to inspire 100 people around the world to discover the healing power of gratitude. 

First, I created a Facebook group where I showed people how to keep a daily gratitude practice, and within one week I had over 100 participants. Soon there were participants from 15  countries in over six continents sharing what they were grateful for! 

Next, I interviewed people who shared their success as a way to inspire more people. 

I then began researching the health benefits of practicing gratitude and created a series of  “Vitamin G” inspiration calls and shared the recordings. 

I also began sharing my story.

Finally, I wrote, designed, and published, From Gratitude to Bliss: A Journey in Health and  Happiness. The original draft included inspiring quotes about gratitude from well-known people. As I looked over the printer’s proofs I realized that I should have written my own quotes. I stayed up until 4 am that night rewriting them, turning them into coaching tips that would guide users to get the most out of their practice. I believe this is what makes this journal so unique and powerful. It is written by a health coach (me). 

After submitting this video entry, I was chosen (along with my friend!) to attend IIN’s 2011  Costa Rica Conference:

At that conference, I met so many amazing health coaches including Annie Wagoner of Core Nourishment who I recently interviewed on Instagram and Lindsey Witmer Collins who is the  App Developer for the Gratitude To Bliss App! 

The following year, From Gratitude to Bliss received a gold award from Living Now Books, “Celebrating the innovation and creativity of newly published books that enhance the quality of our lives.”

I can’t believe this all happened 10 years ago. My life has never been the same and I am so unbelievably grateful.