The 90-Day Gratitude Experiment That Changed How I See Everything
I’ll be honest — I resisted this for years.
I’m a founder. I’ve built companies, managed teams of 40 people, navigated a PE acquisition. My world runs on strategy, metrics, and execution. Gratitude journaling sounded like something for people who have inspirational quotes on their walls.
Then I tried it for 90 days. And I can’t go back.
Why I finally started
It wasn’t a spiritual awakening. It was exhaustion.
I was running at full speed — VP of Product at a robotics startup, side projects, family, the constant hum of “what’s next.” I wasn’t unhappy. I just wasn’t feeling anything. Days blurred together. Weekends felt like gaps between work weeks.
My wife noticed before I did. “You’re here, but you’re not here,” she said one morning. She was right.
So I made a deal with myself: 90 days. One journal entry per day. Not affirmations. Not “I’m grateful for my health” on autopilot. One specific moment from the past 24 hours that made me stop — even for a second.
What the first two weeks felt like
Terrible. Honestly.
Day 1: “Grateful for coffee.” That’s it. That’s what I wrote.
Day 4: “My daughter drew a picture of our family. I’m the tall one with the big head.” Better, but still surface-level.
Day 9: I almost quit. It felt like homework. I was sitting there at 10pm trying to remember something — anything — worth writing down. And that’s when it hit me.
The problem wasn’t that nothing good happened. The problem was that I’d stopped paying attention.
The shift (around day 21)
Something changed in the third week, and it wasn’t in the journal — it was during the day.
I started noticing things in real time. Not because I was trying to be mindful. Because I knew I’d need to write something tonight, and my brain started scanning for moments automatically.
The light coming through the kitchen window at 7am. The way my colleague’s face changed when I told her she did a great job. The smell of rain on concrete when I stepped outside.
These things were always there. I just never had a reason to register them.
What 90 days taught me
1. Gratitude is not soft — it’s a perception upgrade
I used to think gratitude was about being thankful. It’s not. It’s about attention. When you practice noticing what’s good, you literally see more of it. Not because reality changes — because your filter does.
This is neuroscience, not philosophy. Your reticular activating system (the part of your brain that decides what to pay attention to) responds to repeated focus. Train it on problems, you see problems everywhere. Train it on moments of wonder, you see those instead.
2. Specificity is everything
“I’m grateful for my family” does nothing after day 3. But “I’m grateful that my daughter held my hand unprompted while we walked to the car” — that brings the feeling back every time I read it.
The more specific, the more real. The more real, the more it rewires your default state.
3. It compounds (like everything worth doing)
Day 1 feels pointless. Day 30 feels nice. Day 60 feels different. Day 90 — you’re a slightly different person, and you can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened.
The compound effect isn’t dramatic. It’s subtle. You wake up one morning and realize you’re actually looking forward to the day — not because anything specific is planned, but because you’ve trained yourself to expect moments worth noticing.
4. Bad days are the most important days to write
On good days, gratitude is easy. On terrible days — when a deal falls through, when you argue with your partner, when everything feels like it’s unraveling — that’s when one line in a journal has the most power.
Because finding one good moment in a bad day is proof that the day wasn’t entirely bad. And that changes how you carry it.
What I do now
I still journal every morning. 5 minutes. Three things:
- One WOW moment from yesterday (the most vivid, specific thing)
- One thing I’m looking forward to today
- One person who made yesterday better
That’s it. No complicated prompts. No pages of reflection. Just enough to keep the attention muscle working.
The unexpected side effect
The biggest change wasn’t in my mood — it was in my relationships.
When you practice noticing good moments, you notice people more. You catch the small things your partner does. You see your kid’s face light up. You remember to say thank you — not as a habit, but because you actually felt it.
My wife stopped saying “you’re not here.” Because I was.
I built the WowDay Journal because this practice was too important to keep on random notebook pages. 90 days, one WOW moment per day. That’s all it takes.