Alex Hourigan
Hey chicks, I'm Al.
And I'm Sal.
And this is Two Broke Chicks, the show sharing life lessons from the gals, for the gals. Welcome to our very new mini episode fact or cap. Basically what this episode is, is Sal and I are challenging ourselves to something that maybe we've seen on the internet, or it's the newest fad, and whether or not it's actually worth it. We're doing the hard yards for you, so you don't have to waste your time.
Sally McMullen
Exactly.
Alex Hourigan
This week's episode, you've probably seen all of those gratitude journals on like Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, those like aesthetically pleasing TikTok videos that I would love to be my life but I'm a gremlin. So, here we are. And we thought we would try it out every night, we wrote down three things that we were grateful for that day. The challenge here was that we had to avoid repeating ourselves, making the time to do it and not getting bored. So it was actually a lot trickier than we thought it was gonna be.
I've done this before, because I had a diary that had those prompts in it, but it was weekly. And it was something like what you were grateful for or wins of the week. And I would find myself repeating myself all the time. So it lost its effect, whereas the challenge of this was, like you said, to do something that was specific to that day. And I actually loved it, because it helped me realise the joys, the little joys that I often take for granted, every day. So some of the things that I wrote down were like, had a really good coffee, like a really good iced coffee and I was like, this is worth writing down. So I'd write it down in my diary every day. Another one was one of my favourite podcasts got extended for another 30 episodes, 60 Songs That Explained The 90s, they're now doing 90 songs, I wrote that down. My boyfriend, Chris made me laugh about something. So like, he does this every day but he was, like, really on a roll one day and I was just in stitches, so that went in there. I went to an art gallery with my sister, wrote that down. Like there was just so many things. I think I put one of our podcast episodes in there because I thought that went really well. And yeah, I think if I had done that weekly, I would have forgotten about a lot of those things and the days kind of blurring together and I'm like, "Oh, I didn't achieve anything.". So it helped me put things into perspective. How did you find it?
I think, obviously, doing this everyday, like you said is supposed to highlight things that you wouldn't initially look at. I definitely think it helped with that because you know that I'm like 100 miles an hour person. And I'm always, the way that I sometimes look at achievements can be a little bit too work focused or a little bit too life focused, of I went to the gym, I you know, did a really good job on an article or stuff like that. And it was quite robotic. And it didn't necessarily kind of have a lot of emotions to the things that I was giving myself a pat on the back for. But it was just little things like my roommate made me really laugh one night when she was like resharing two stories from my story. And she did them the wrong way cuz she's so bad with technology. She went, "Oh, no, I blogged them wrong.".
Sally McMullen
She's a blogger, folks.
Alex Hourigan
I was in, like you said like, I was just in tears. And, like, that's something that, like, our friendship is when you say something really funny like that, we then repeat it. Like, whenever you do something wrong then, like, I like, dropped something on the floor when I was making something in the kitchen. Then I was like, "Oh no, I blogged it wrong.". Like, it just sticks and then, as well, I was going for a walk and I saw these two different trees that were growing really close to each other. And then they grew into the same tree!
Sally McMullen
That's us.
Alex Hourigan
And it was just little things like that. Or, one morning, I was, like, woken up and the sun was one of those sunrises that was popping off that morning. And like the view from my room is just beautiful and I was just sitting there at like 6am and I've never been a morning person and just really was, like, appreciating that. So, I will admit I missed a day. It wasn't my fault.
Sally McMullen
Why did you miss it, Al?
Alex Hourigan
It was the spicy Margarita.
Always the culprit.
And a Thursday. There's something about a Thursday, which was another thing I put in my gratitude journal. Something about a Thursday that does something to me that I'm like. Let's go, like, it just puts a little pep in my step. So, I will admit I did miss a day. And even though I had a really nice night, that night that I was like, "Wee!", I really regretted not doing it. And then I was trying to think, I was like what did I? And I kind of couldn't think of the things that I was grateful for that day and they became more generalised. I noticed that when I didn't do it on the day, it was easy to fall back into that habit of, "Seeing friends, getting work done, making breakfast", you know, like it was easy to fall back into old habits of just missing one day. Damn you, spicy marg! But yeah, so that was kind of my experience with it.
I definitely recommend, and it's so easy to do, you can either write it down physically, put it in your phone notes, give it a go! I recommend that you, you don't really have anything to lose.
Yeah, my number one tip with doing this experiment though, is to allocate a time of the day that is consistent across all the days that you do it, to hold yourself accountable. For me it was 9:30 because that's generally the time that I get into bed to be able to read my book or just, you know, scroll on TikTok or watch, like, a TV show by myself. And so in doing it at that time, it was always kind of like alright, now's the time to do this. And it's a lot easier to hold yourself accountable for it. And I definitely, definitely think it worked.
So is it a fact or cap?
Happy to report it's a fact, Sal.
Sally McMullen
Yay! Success for our first one.
Alex Hourigan
Yay! Because I'm scared for some of the ones that we have planned.
Me too, some juicy ones coming up.
That's it for fact or cap for this week's episode. If you want to give it a whirl yourself, we've dropped some references and helpful TikToks in the show notes as well as some journals that you can look at, that we recommend and we've tried ourselves. If you have a challenge you would like us to try, feel free to let us know at Two Broke Chicks on Facebook or Instagram or wherever you want to find us. We're everywhere.
Sally McMullen
TikTok. Carrier pigeon.
Alex Hourigan
Yeah! Thanks for having us in your ear holes. We love to be here and we'll see you for next week's episode.
Sally McMullen
Bye, chicks!
Alex Hourigan
Bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
