Honest writing on gratitude practice, journalling habits and the research underneath — from the people building Kansha, a free gratitude journal app.
Mental Wellbeing
Does Gratitude Journalling Actually Help With the Winter Blues? — Gratitude journalling doesn't fix the biology behind the winter blues, but it stops a grey week from erasing all the evidence that good things still happened in it. Here's what worked over four winters, and what didn't.
Why Do Friendships Fade Without You Ever Noticing? — Friendships don't end in a single argument, they end in a slow, unnoticed drift. Here's the research on why we miss it, and the feature I built into my own journal to catch it before it's too late.
Can a Gratitude Journal Replace Therapy? An Honest Answer — I build a gratitude app for a living, and the honest answer is no — a journal can't replace therapy. But it's far from useless. Where the line falls, and how to tell which one you need right now.
How to Practise Gratitude When Life Is Actually Hard — Counting your blessings mid-crisis can feel like lying. Here is the version of gratitude that survived my worst quarter — name the hard thing first, then notice what is still holding.
Can Gratitude Journalling Help With Burnout? What I Found — I hit proper burnout two years ago and tried to journal my way out of it. Here's what actually helped, what made it worse, and where a gratitude practice quietly reaches its limit.
Does Gratitude Journalling Actually Help With Anxiety? — I spent ages believing that listing three good things each night would quietly untie the knot in my chest. It didn't — until I changed one thing about the order I did it in.
The Link Between Food, Energy and How Grateful You Feel — I started noticing, in my own journal, that the days I felt least grateful were almost never the days I thought they were. They were the days I'd eaten badly, slept poorly, and run on caffeine. The pattern was a bit embarrassing once I saw it.
How Tracking Your Mood Changes the Way You See Your Week — I thought I had a reasonably accurate picture of how my weeks went. Three months of mood tracking later, that picture has turned out to be almost entirely wrong — in small, specific, useful ways.
Does Writing Down Your Goals Actually Help You Achieve Them? — The popular '42% more likely' goal-writing stat oversimplifies the real research. Here's what actually predicts whether you follow through, and why I built a reason field into Kansha's goals tab.
Does Gratitude Make You Complacent? Why I Worried It Would — I worried that getting good at appreciating what I had would take my foot off the gas. The research says the opposite: grateful people make more progress on their goals, not less.
What a Limiting Belief Workshop Actually Feels Like (And Why It Works) — I went in expecting nonsense. Here is what a limiting belief workshop actually feels like — the awkward questions, the wince that signals the real belief, and why naming it out loud changes how much grip it has.
The Five Fs Weekly Review: Why Structured Reflection Beats Winging It — Fifteen minutes, five questions, every Sunday. The five Fs weekly review is the only structured reflection habit that ever stuck for me — here is how it works and why it beats just thinking about your week.
Why I Built Kansha: The Gratitude App I Wished Existed — I've started and abandoned more gratitude journals than I can count. This is the story of why I finally built something that worked for me — and what I learned along the way.
How to Start a Gratitude Journal (When You've Never Kept One) — I've started gratitude journals more times than I'd like to admit, and quit just as often. Here's how to actually begin one that survives past day four — small, honest, and built to stick.
Gratitude Journal App vs Paper — Which One Actually Works Better? — I've kept both a paper gratitude journal and a digital one for years. Here's the honest comparison — which format actually keeps you going, and how to choose the one that fits the way your head works.
How Long Does It Take for Gratitude Journalling to Actually Work? — I nearly quit journalling on day nine because nothing was happening. Here's the honest timeline — what the research says, and what actually changed for me at three weeks, two months and beyond.
What I Learned From 100 Days of Daily Journalling — I'd journalled on and off for years before finally keeping it up properly. Here's what 100 days of doing it daily actually changed — and what I got wrong at the start.
Do Guided Gratitude Challenges Actually Work? — We built four gratitude challenges into Kansha, including one we called '21 days' before I'd properly checked the habit-formation research. Here's what's actually doing the work.
How Often Should You Write in a Gratitude Journal? — I spent two years assuming a proper gratitude practice meant every single day. Then the research — and my own journal — quietly disagreed. Why a few times a week often beats daily.
How to Get Back Into Journalling After You've Stopped — The gap between your last entry and now is the most normal thing about journalling. Here is how to restart without the guilt, the catch-up, or another fresh failure.
Morning vs Evening Journalling — Which One Is Actually Better? — I've journalled in the morning and at night, on and off, for years. They're not the same practice — they do different things to your head, and the 'best' time isn't the one the productivity people sell you.
The Five-Minute Gratitude Habit That Actually Stuck for Me — I'd abandoned four gratitude journals before this one stuck. The difference wasn't motivation — it was building something small enough to survive the days when I didn't feel like doing it.