7 Days of Gratitude Challenge
Join the Alo Moves 7 Day Gratitude Challenge — perfect anytime you need a weeklong reset to rest, reflect, and restore.
It’s easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of life. The busyness that comes with work, personal projects, relationships, and more can create stress that clouds your mind and pulls you out of a state of calm and abundance.
With gratitude, you’re able to acknowledge the goodness in your life and enhance that feeling of connectedness to the world around you. It’s not just fluff, either — scientific research backs up the power of gratitude. According to Harvard Health Publishing, feeling gratitude is linked to greater levels of happiness and positive emotions, improved health, better resilience in the face of adversity, and stronger relationships.
Think of gratitude like a muscle. It’s something that needs to be trained and cultivated to feel more natural, but your efforts will be fully rewarded. Meditating on gratitude and keeping a gratitude journal are excellent ways to weave gratitude into your daily routine, which is why we’ve developed this 7-day journey to get you started. Take one class per day and follow it up with the daily gratitude journal prompt to reflect on your post-practice thoughts. Better yet, find a friend or two to join this journey with you and discuss the daily reflection through conversation.
Not an Alo Moves member? You can practice these gratitude classes and more for free with a 14-day trial.
DAY 1
Appreciating the Good with Avery Whitmore
You’ll connect to abundance with simple breathing techniques to calm your mind and body, then journey into a guided meditation set to the relaxing sounds of Tibetan singing bowls.
Journal prompt:
There is so much to be grateful for if you remind yourself to look. Even in the hard times, we can acknowledge the health and strength of our body, the beauty of the natural world, the connections we’ve made, and the teachings that keep us going.
This is a prompt you might have seen before, but it’s time to approach it with new eyes: make an exhaustive list of the things you’re grateful for, even the smallest of details. It could be a person, a feeling, a detail, a memory, a skill, etc. Turn back to this list anytime you need an instant uplift.
DAY 2
Drift Off with Gratitude with Naya Rappaport
End the day with a clear mind and a grateful heart in this gentle heart-opening yoga sequence that’s perfect before getting under the covers.
Journal prompt:
Now that you’re in an open and reflective space, write a letter of gratitude to someone who has made a difference in your life. It’s your choice whether or not you’d like to send it.
DAY 3
Open & Grateful Mind with Jackie Stewart
Develop your mental muscles of gratitude by stepping back to look at the big picture. In this meditation, you’ll learn to appreciate what’s available to you right now and overcome the tendency to focus on what’s not working.
Journal prompt:
In today’s meditation, Jackie mentions that focusing on appreciation is not about negating or invalidating your wishes to be different or better. However, focusing only on the wishes can make it easy to lose sight of what's right in front of you. And when you refocus your mind to what you do have, you can discover a whole world of goodness waiting right there.
When you make a wish list or goal list, you might often write down objects or events. A new job, a perfect partner, a nice house, educational degrees, a lifestyle change. But by putting these things on a list of things you haven’t obtained yet, you can lose sight of the progress you’ve made on your journey to get there and make those goals feel more unattainable. Today, write down that goal list — but on the other side of the paper, also write down the work you’ve put in towards that goal and reflect on the journey you’ve made. You can recall the opportunities that have helped you work toward each goal, acknowledge hard work (big and small steps), and appreciate the people that have helped you learn and grow in your journey to that goal.
DAY 4
Cultivate Gratitude with Kayla Nielsen
Learn to connect to gratitude even through hardship. This meditation will take you through an exercise that will help you find beauty and appreciation in your experiences.
Journal prompt:
Gratitude can be a complex subject with complex feelings. It isn’t all sunshine and roses if you’re pushing the stressful thoughts away under the cover of gratitude without processing the thoughts and feelings properly. And if you’ve been accustomed to associating gratitude with guilt (“How can I feel [good thing] when [bad thing] is happening?” or “I should feel grateful because [bad thing] is happening in the world and it’s not happening to me.”), it will take some work to undo those associations. It is possible to still feel gratitude and at the same time be processing stress or negative events.
As you journal today, write about your history with the subject of gratitude. How has your upbringing shaped your feelings on gratitude? What associations do you have with feeling gratitude — positive or negative? Keep it unstructured and write anything that comes to mind when you consider the topic of gratitude. Allow yourself to feel light and unburdened afterwards.
DAY 5
Morning Motivation with Jacy Cunningham
In this inspiring morning talk for self-love, you’ll learn how to do a “morning marriage ceremony” for yourself and build daily affirmations that will set you up for an uplifting day.
Journal prompt:
Today, write vows to yourself.
As Jacy says in his talk, we’re taught so often to marry so much outside of ourselves, but self-love and appreciation is the most important love that we have. Write this as a love letter to you, from you. It’s the letter that only you can write to you. Commit these vows to yourself every morning. You can love your life, but it starts with loving you. And when you love you, everything else falls into place.
DAY 6
Grateful Power Flow with Patrick Beach
Slow it down and savor every moment in this power yoga flow for gratitude and balance. It’s a beautiful opportunity to appreciate self-study and growth in your practice.
Journal prompt:
Practicing gratitude is a powerful reminder that life doesn’t always go the way you want — and that it’s perfectly OK. Maybe the road to your goals takes a more winding path than you intended. In what ways has it been beneficial for you to take a different path than you thought? Write about the lessons you’ve learned on your journey, and feel a sense of appreciation for all that has led you here.
DAY 7
Welcome Appreciation with Kirat Randhawa
Invite gratitude for the small things in this relaxing meditation practice. You’ll settle into the moment and notice the inherent beauty in simply paying attention.
Gratitude often feels centered around personal goals or belongings. When you think about what would make you happy, do you think about large objects or grand events? Notice what comes up.
As Kirat says in her meditation, you don’t need to make anything happen to experience the magic of life — all you need to do is notice its presence within the subtleties of your day. Write about the smallest things that you appreciate being able to experience. It can be the way the wind moves the leaves in a tree, a sound you enjoy, or the flavor of your favorite food.
Now bring that attention to the current moment. In this moment, close your eyes and feel where you are. What is it that you enjoy about this moment? Tune in and feel gratitude for your experience exactly as it is now. The past is unchangeable and the future is beyond reach right now, but what you have in this moment is all yours. Embrace it for all of its beauty.
