Day 3 is about seeing self-love as more than just feeling good — and understanding the key role that a reality-based gratitude practice has in expanding our appreciation for ourselves and our lives.

Our brains are pattern-seeking and meaning-making machines. When we bring something into our awareness, it starts to pop up everywhere.

The classic example of this is the person who wants to buy a red car, and suddenly she starts seeing red cars all over the place, where she may have never noticed them before.

The thing is, our brains are incredibly powerful. Whatever we’re scanning the horizon for, we’re most likely to notice. Whatever we believe to be true about the world or others, we’re most likely to experience. If we think most people are jerks, we’re probably going to have a lot of unpleasant encounters with others. If we assume most people are doing their best and so are we, we’re probably going to find interactions that reflect grace and goodwill.

This capacity to alter our perception of daily experiences is precisely why gratitude is such a potent tool for growing and nurturing a solid sense of self-love.

People tend to underestimate the power of a reality-based gratitude practice. They think it’s just about feeling happy when things are going well. But research shows that when it comes to gratitude, what’s at work in our brains is much more complex, and the benefits are far-reaching.

Adopting a posture of gratitude that is rooted in mindfulness is less about feeling good all the time and more about letting yourself feel all the things you’re feeling without judgment, and then hunting for the good — whether things are going great or lousy.

So true gratitude is not asking us to deny reality or tamp down difficult emotions or insist on “positive vibes only.” (That’s known as bypassing, and it doesn’t help us feel better in the long run.) Rather, it’s asking us to keep our eyes and heart open, to name what’s really going on, to accept life as it is in each moment — and then to also open ourselves to the possibility that something good, truthful, wise, or healing might arise from any situation.

And, like red cars and nice people, when we intentionally decide to notice reasons to be grateful, no matter how small or mundane… we’ll find more and more things to be grateful for. It’s a positive feedback loop.

It’s not hard to see why gratitude is one of the most powerful tools you can have in cultivating a sense of self-love that is honest, brave, and resilient.

You can start a simple gratitude practice on your own anytime. Closing your day with a journaling exercise where you list every single thing you can think of to be thankful for can be a wonderful way to start (and it also helps you sleep better!).

Or, if you’d like a guided experience, try one of our guided meditations inside the app to help you get started. We’ve included one below.