Thankful people aren’t living better lives. They’re just looking at theirs through a cleaner window.

Gratitude depends less on circumstances than on what you are able to notice, which is why two people in nearly identical situations describe entirely different lives. The window is a precise image, because the view stays the same and attention is the glass. None of this requires pretending that hard things are fine.

Write down three specific things from today instead of three categories. Specificity is what makes it work, since the general version stops landing within a week. Keep it up for a fortnight and see whether you start spotting them before the pen comes out.