Secrets to Gratitude ?

Are there complex secrets to gratitude and gratitude journals? I am starting to keep a gratitude journal now, to record points that I feel thankful in life. John P. Miller (2014) has written about the benefits of gratitude journals in many of his books, and this is an area that I would especially like to explore in education. For example, does the process of keeping a gratitude journal help teachers appraise their students differently, across a span of time? I would like to have teachers try out gratitude journaling for themselves.
   I have some theories, even after my initial "test period" (well, 2 days, to be exact!) of writing a gratitude journal. Here are some summary "tentative conclusions":

1) Writing only about gratitude definitely has an effect on one's mentality. If I simply write a journal about "anything", it's bound to become speculative or potentially critical of something, which is antithetical to gratitude. My current blog is not a gratitude journal, because it meanders into all sorts of philosophical detours. Forcing myself to write on a theme of gratitude is a bit like channeling water into a long funnel: it focuses one's thought patterns so that positive affect is more likely to emerge.

2) Sometimes, I hate to say it, but gratitude is difficult to cultivate with any modicum of sincerity. I was going to write this morning that I am "grateful to my morning coffee", but this does not feel sincere to me at all. It also lacks impact, because coffee cannot be extended to general principle of life, and its effects are limited to that caffeine rush in the morning. When I sit down to write in this journal, what pops to mind is actually things that are otherwise irritating or annoying to me (such as getting on the wrong bus) and how I can challenge myself to "refrarme" it in a grateful way. Is this more sincere than writing about coffee in the morning? I don't know, but I find that the act of reframing a negative situation into something positive feels very empowering to me.

3) A theory: could gratitude journals form a kind of transitional object that mediates between everyday suffering and the desire for something "better"? I tend to think of it similar to how the ancient Roman meditation of conjuring up "worst case scenarios" as a way of preparing them for the very worst, which is an interesting principle.

4) Gratitude forces me to be simpler in how I think. Do I like something or not? Why do I like it? What makes me happy to have it? And so on. I tend to be complicated in my regular blog, but my gratitude journal forces me to be more simple and immediate. Perhaps the problem with being a teacher or academic is that one has a tendency not to be direct, and gratitude journals ge more to the point.

More to be continued on this experiment!

Keith's Gratitude Journal: https://keithgratitude.blogspot.com/

Miller, J. P. (2014). The Contemplative Practitioner: Meditation and Education in the Workplace. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.