About

Fill your life with bright memories.

Jar of Light helps you build a habit of noticing the good and being grateful for it.

Every day brings worries and anxieties, and it's easy to start feeling that life is hard, dark and dangerous. But there is another way: each day, write down one bright moment, one thing you're grateful for. A warm meeting, unexpected help, a bright evening with family and loved ones. Entry by entry, you fill your own jar of light with bright memories.

Why it works

An action we repeat regularly becomes automatic over time — a habit1. Gratitude also changes how the brain works: after a few weeks of gratitude writing, the brain's response to gratitude was stronger even three months later2. Studies show that writing down good things raises life satisfaction and helps people feel joy and look to the future with optimism more often3,4,5. As you add to your jar every day, you learn to meet life with trust and warmth.

And once the jar is full, you can return to it like a personal diary or a treasure chest: read it again and make your day brighter.

Sources

  1. Lally P., van Jaarsveld C. H. M., Potts H. W. W., Wardle J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
  2. Kini P., Wong J., McInnis S., Gabana N., Brown J. W. (2016). The effects of gratitude expression on neural activity. NeuroImage, 128, 1–10. doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.12.040
  3. Emmons R. A., McCullough M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.377
  4. Seligman M. E. P., Steen T. A., Park N., Peterson C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410–421. doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.60.5.410
  5. Davis D. E. et al. (2016). Thankful for the little things: A meta-analysis of gratitude interventions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(1), 20–31. doi.org/10.1037/cou0000107

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