I know, I know: Some of you are getting ants in your pants. You don’t want to do your ridiculously unambitious gratitude practice, you want to do MORE. I get it.

Once you feel the pull of your unambitious habit—you feel yourself automatically practicing gratitude after your trigger or anchor (for me, this would be when I automatically practice gratitude during my lunchtime, for example)—take another baby step. Instead of just opening my gratitude app and thinking about it, I can consider actually sharing what I appreciate with someone else in an easy way. And then every few days — once you are good and antsy again, and it feels easy-peasy, add a little tiny something else to your habit. (Eventually I may find myself calling people or hand-writing notes, for example.)

Remember that if you resist the urge to be more ambitious or do more, you’ll increase your odds of being successful over the long haul. The first goal is to establish a life-long habit; once you’ve accomplished this, you can work on making the practice even more fulfilling and meaningful (if you want to; many people prefer to keep it simple).

What To Do Today

Task #1: Use the page titled “Expand (Really, Really) Slowly” in your workbook to think through ways you can expand the habit you’ve been working on.

Task #2: Take your (very slightly) expanded gratitude practice for a spin. Does it still feel super easy?