Best Gratitude Journaling App and Software of 2022

We’re often told to count our blessings, but few of us make a habit of it without a little help. So how can you motivate others to note down the things they’re thankful for, and benefit from regular gratitude practice?

Gratitude journaling apps are the perfect solution for busy clients who need a little prompting to fill out a log or journal regularly. This article will show you how to use Quenza to create beautiful, engaging gratitude diaries, logs, and records effortlessly so that your clients will always remember to complete them!

Why is Gratitude Journaling Important?

Journaling is one of the easiest ways for clients to benefit from daily gratitude practice as part of therapy or coaching interventions.

While it can be as simple as noting down the positive things that occur every day, an ever-expanding body of research findings supports its many potential benefits for our emotional, mental, and physical health.

So how do they work?

There’s no right or wrong way to keep a gratitude journal, which can be as simple as a few daily sentences or a place for longer reflective entries. In terms of what to write about, a few ideas for your clients might include:

• A list of things they were thankful for that day
• Character strengths, traits, or skills that they’re glad to have
• People who have helped them or who play an important role in their lives
• Life changes that have brought them joy
• Positive lessons they’ve learned from overcoming a challenge
• Elements of their job or work life that they are thankful for
• Physical capabilities or features that they are happy to possess.

Big and small things can all go into a gratitude journal – the value in keeping a log is the physical act of writing it down. Writing not only facilitates acceptance of our experiences, but and as positive psychology practitioner Emmons puts it:[1]

It allows you to see the meaning of events going on around you and create meaning in your own life.

6 Benefits of Journaling Your Blessings

There are a host of advantages to regular gratitude journaling; the following list includes just a few examples.

1. Gratitude practice can enhance self-worth and self-esteem[2]
2. Higher levels of gratitude are linked with more positive thoughts amd better sleep quality[3]
3. Being thankful can encourage us to show more prosocial behavior toward others, enhancing our communication, interpersonal trust, and social relationships[4]
4. It can make individuals more generous, especially younger clients like adolescents[5]
5. Gratitude is negatively related to symptoms of depression and anxiety, in part because it shifts our focus to positive thoughts and feelings[6]
6. Counting our blessings can help us be more optimistic while boosting our overall satisfaction and positive affect.[7]

Regarding how often to journal, experts recommend dedicating at least 15 minutes to journal writing at least 1-2 times per week.[8]

What is the Best Gratitude Journaling App?

As most helping professionals will know, pen and paper journaling isn’t the most foolproof approach for many clients.

The hardest part of regular journaling is often remembering to do so in the first place, and it’s even tougher to carry a physical diary everywhere!

Experts recommend dedicating at least 15 minutes to gratitude journal writing at least 1-2 times per week.

Today, gratitude apps like Quenza are a far more convenient way to encourage clients to actually get into writing. These typically offer a host of features that remind clients to make an entry and allow them to do so from any connected device.

But only one app allows you to fully engage clients for the long haul with uniquely personalized gratitude journal templates, prompts, and resources that meet their precise needs: Quenza.

With Quenza’s professionally designed suite of activity building, pathway design, and client engagement tools, you have everything you need to create evidence-based tools and share them with others instantly.

Click here for our expert advice on how to get your clients maximally engaged with your resources.

How To Use The Quenza Software For Journaling

If you’re ready to use Quenza to share bespoke, practice-branded gratitude journals with your clients, there are two simple ways:

1. By customizing an existing journal or Expansion Pathway, or
2. By designing your own.

Example 1: Customize a Quenza Expansion Pathway

Quenza Expansion Pathways are ready-made journal templates that you can personalize with custom prompts, sections, and text before sharing them with clients as a gratitude diary.

Three Good Things, shown below, is one example Pathway that automatically shares gratitude journal prompts with your clients on a daily basis:

To personalize and send an Expansion Pathway like Three Good Things, add it to your Library. Now, you can easily edit a copy of it by changing the intervals between steps, modifying the text, uploading your own YouTube videos or mp3s, and more. When you’re finished, simply save it and share it with your clients through Quenza’s app.

Example 2: Design Your Own Gratitude Journal

By creating your own bespoke gratitude journal, you can create a uniquely personalized tool that aligns perfectly with your client’s precise needs, lifestyle, and wellbeing goals. An interactive and multimedia-rich diary might be perfect for younger clients, for instance, or you might develop a tailored solution for couples counseling clients.

To start, open a new template in your Activity Builder and create your solution using Quenza’s easy drag-and-drop fields as we’re doing below:

With bespoke introductory text and custom multimedia, you can easily develop engaging journal pathways from a few exercises, complete with reminders for your clients to complete their entries at specific intervals.

Learn more about using Quenza as an online journaling tool here: Best Habit Tracker App and Online Journaling Tool

15 Gratitude Prompts To Send To Your Clients

If you’re in search of inspiration for prompts to include in your journal, here are some ideas from Quenza Expansions such as Gratitude for Important People and The Positive Aspects of Your Relationship.

1. Please describe a good thing that happened today. Write down exactly what happened. What was your role in this event?
2. Name one person you are grateful to have in your life:
3. My favorite thing about me and my partner, as a couple, is:
4. Describe one experience that has made you grow as a person. How does that make you feel? 
5. Identify a positive turning point in your life. Which helpful or empowering beliefs were shaped by this event?

A few more directed prompts might include:

1. What are three skills that you’re grateful to have?
2. Name one person who brings you joy. How have they brought happiness into your life?
3. Describe your favorite moment of the day. What is special about it?
4. What recent opportunities have come up for you that you are thankful for?
5. Describe your favorite place and how being there makes you feel.
6. What are your favorite foods, and what do you love about them?
7. Write about a fond childhood memory of yours.
8. What is one mistake you’ve made that has changed your life for the better?
9. What do you love most about your day-to-day routine?
10. List three body parts that you are thankful to have. How do they help you do the things you love?

7 Unique Features Included In Quenza

Developing and sharing customized client tools is easy with gratitude journaling software like Quenza. Not only can you create the most relevant content for your clients’ gratitude journals, but you can also give your solutions a professional touch by adding your professional brand logo to them.

To help you share and discuss your journals with clients, as well as monitor their engagement, Quenza’s toolkit contains a host of useful features:

1. Private, secure instant messaging – Quenza Chat is perfect for introducing your diaries and other coaching or therapy tools, in addition to answering questions in real-time
2. Quenza White Label – you can add your logo to online tools and the downloadable PDFs that your clients are free to create from your resources
3. Quenza Expansions – a library of easily customizable activity templates that you can use to save time when designing solutions (and diary tools like Quenza’s Stress Diary Expansion)
4. Client engagement tools – including in-app client notifications reminding them to complete their gratitude journal, alongside personal to-do lists
5. Results tracking – allowing you to view how your clients are progressing with their journals and other activities
6. Quenza Notes – an organized way to document your sessions or comment on/annotate notes you share with your clients, and
7. Quenza Files – a safe way to store PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations, audio, video, and other documents on one HIPAA-compliant platform.

Final Thoughts

Gratitude journals are only one part of any therapy or coaching program, so why not create, share, and monitor them alongside your clients’ other interventions?

It’s far easier for your clients to build a gratitude habit when you share personalized tools that fit seamlessly into their lifestyles, and Quenza gives you everything you need to do exactly that. If you’ve built a customized app for yourself or for those you help, we’d love to hear about how you’ve tailored it to their needs. Let us know with a comment below!

Start your 30-day trial for instant, unlimited access to Quenza’s gratitude journaling app and all of its easy-to-use features. Quenza will give you all you need to create bespoke digital logs for your therapy and coaching clients, so you can start integrating gratitude practice into your treatments or programs today.

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