Hi, I‘m Lorena and welcome to The Stress Less Pencil. We use art as a tool to boost our mental health and wellbeing. The weekly prompts are designed for total beginners and experienced artists alike, so welcome.
I've been keeping a daily gratitude journal for a while now. For each day, I write down three things that went well, no matter how small. This practice really helps to get a positive outlook on life.
But unfortunately, I haven't really managed to set up a solid routine to fill it out every single day. I often find myself with a few days of backlog to complete, and I've noticed just how quickly I forget what has happened on a specific day - the good stuff, but also the bad stuff. Maybe I can blame my age, but it's scary that many times on Saturday I can't think of three good things that happened on Tuesday.
So for today's prompt, I've come up with another more playful way to notice the positive stuff right as it happens.
To start, here are some of my happy tunes:
The Activity: Play a round of Positive Emotions Bingo
Step 1 - Make the card
Our bingo card will have 9 fields on it. On a piece of paper, draw a grid with three lines and three rows. Instead of squares, you can also draw three lines of three circles, stars, or any other shape you like.
In each field, and in no particular order, write down a positive emotion:
Joy
Gratitude
Hope
Love
Pride
Interest
Happiness
Satisfaction
Amusement
Now decorate your card with drawing and stickers to your heart's content.
Step 2 - Play the game
Once your bing card is completed, put it on your fridge or in another visible place. Each time you feel one of the positive emotions on the list, mark the field.
Here are the rules for your scores:
Bingo: 3 in a row
Yahtzee: 5 fields marked
Mega-Bingo-Yahtzee: all 9 fields marked
Make sure you yell your score out in the comments and soon as you've achieved it!
Game on!
My Example
I created my Bingo card on Canva, customising one of the many templates they have.
I wish you all a very mega-bingo-yahtzee kind of week.
Love, Lorena
as someone who also tries to journal a little gratitude at night and struggles to stay consistent, I LOVE this super fun variation