The 3 + 3 Journaling Practice: Training Your Brain to Notice What Is Going Right

When you are dealing with chronic pain, health problems, prolonged stress, or simply a difficult season of life, it can become incredibly easy to measure your day by what went wrong. How much did I hurt today? What couldn’t I do? Why am I still so tired? Why am I not getting better faster? What if this doesn’t change? These questions can become such a normal part of our internal dialogue that we may not even realize how much of our attention is being directed toward what is wrong.

There is a reason our brains do this. The nervous system is designed to notice potential problems. Pain, uncertainty, conflict, and anything that might represent a threat naturally demand our attention because, from a survival standpoint, those things are important. If something hurts, your brain wants you to know about it. If something feels unsafe, your brain wants you to pay attention. This isn’t a flaw in the nervous system; it is part of the way the nervous system protects us.

The difficulty comes when we have been living with pain, illness, stress, or uncertainty for a long time. The brain can become very practiced at looking for problems, and those problems can gradually occupy more and more of our attention. We may become very aware of every symptom, every limitation, every difficult interaction, and every indication that something isn’t going the way we want it to go. Meanwhile, many of the other things that happened during the same day barely register.

Those difficult things are real, and this practice is not about pretending otherwise. Instead, I want to teach you a very simple way to help your brain begin noticing what else is true.

An Idea Inspired by The Gap and the Gain

This practice was inspired by the book The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. One of the central ideas in the book is that we often measure ourselves against an ideal that exists somewhere in the future. We think about where we want to be, compare that ideal to where we are now, and focus on the distance between the two. Sullivan and Hardy call this living in the “Gap.” The alternative is to look backward and recognize how far you have already come—the “Gain.” Instead of continually measuring yourself against something you haven’t reached yet, you begin recognizing the progress you’ve already made.

I should probably mention that I have never been much of a journaler. I’ve tried it at different points in my life, and it has just never been my thing. In my mind, journaling always felt a little flowery, like I was supposed to sit down at the end of the day and write pages about my thoughts and feelings. I love the idea of journaling; I’ve just never particularly enjoyed the actual journaling part.

But I decided to try the simple practice described in The Gap and the Gain. At the end of each day, I write down three positive things from that day and three things I want to accomplish or focus on the following day. No pages of reflection, no beautifully written journal entry, and no deep analysis of my feelings. Six things, and I’m done.

I’ve now done this consistently for a week, and what surprised me was how quickly I noticed a difference in the way I was thinking. I wasn’t just remembering the good things when I sat down to write them at night; I started noticing them while they were happening. Something would happen during the day and I would think, Oh, that’s going on my list tonight. I found myself paying more attention to what was going well, what I had accomplished, how I had handled a situation, or simply something that made the day a little better.

That was when I started thinking about my patients. So many of the people I work with are dealing with chronic pain, complicated health problems, tremendous stress, or some combination of the three. When life has been difficult for a long time, it makes perfect sense that our attention begins gravitating toward what is wrong. I began wondering what might happen if we deliberately practiced noticing the rest of the day, too.

I wanted to adapt the idea into something that made sense in the context of healing and nervous system health, while also making it broader than physical improvement alone. Progress can be something your body did better, but it can also be how you handled a difficult situation, how you responded to another person, something you accomplished, a moment you enjoyed, or simply something good that happened that you might otherwise have overlooked.

That is where the 3 + 3 Practice comes from: three Progress Points from today and three Intentions for tomorrow. It takes only a few minutes, but as I discovered for myself, there may be a much bigger reason those few minutes matter.

And don’t worry—you do not have to become a journaler.

Apparently, neither do I.

Your Brain Notices What It Has Learned to Look For

At any given moment, there is far more information around you than your conscious mind could possibly process. Your brain has to continually decide what deserves your attention and what can remain in the background. This ability to selectively direct attention is essential. Otherwise, we would be overwhelmed by every sound, sensation, movement, thought, and piece of information around us.

Pain is particularly good at capturing attention, and it is supposed to be. Pain is biologically important information. When something hurts, the nervous system gives that information priority because it may indicate a potential threat. With chronic pain, however, attention can become increasingly centered on the body and its symptoms. Some people begin monitoring how they feel throughout the day almost automatically: Does it hurt now? Is it worse? Is that sensation new? Can I still do this? What will happen if I do that?

This is one reason I don’t want the 3 + 3 Practice to become another way of monitoring your body. Your Progress Points can certainly include physical improvements, but they don’t have to. In fact, I think it is important that they often don’t.

Your life is bigger than your symptoms.

What Is a Progress Point?

A Progress Point is simply something from your day that you want your brain to notice and remember. It may be an accomplishment, but it doesn’t have to be. It may be something that improved, something you handled differently, a meaningful interaction, a moment you enjoyed, or simply something good that happened.

A physical Progress Point might be realizing that you walked farther than you could a month ago, slept better the night before, had less pain in the afternoon, or were able to do something that has been difficult recently. Those moments absolutely matter, and when we are healing, it can be important to recognize gradual changes that might otherwise be overlooked.

But a Progress Point might also have nothing to do with your body. Maybe you were more patient with your child. Perhaps someone said something that normally would have upset you for the rest of the day, but this time you recovered more quickly. Maybe you handled a difficult conversation differently, asked for help instead of trying to do everything yourself, set a boundary, called a friend, finished something you had been avoiding, or caught yourself falling into an old pattern and made a different choice.

It can be even simpler than that. Maybe you laughed really hard. Maybe the weather was beautiful and you actually stopped long enough to notice it. Maybe you enjoyed your coffee, had a wonderful conversation with your spouse, listened to a song you love, sat outside for ten minutes, or had a moment when you simply felt peaceful.

None of these things has to be impressive. The purpose isn’t to create a list of accomplishments so that you can prove you had a productive day. The purpose is to give your brain an opportunity to recognize experiences that might otherwise disappear beneath everything that felt difficult.

We Are Collecting the Other Evidence, Too

This distinction is incredibly important because this practice is not about pretending everything is wonderful. It is not about denying pain, illness, grief, financial stress, relationship problems, exhaustion, or any of the very real things that people experience. It is also not about suggesting that if you simply think positively enough, your medical problems will disappear. That isn’t what we are doing.

Instead, we are collecting the other evidence, too.

Maybe today was a difficult day and you had a wonderful conversation with your son. Both can be true. Maybe your back hurt and you also walked around the block when a month ago you couldn’t. Both can be true. Maybe work was incredibly stressful and you noticed that you handled a situation more calmly than you would have six months ago. Both can be true.

When life has been difficult for a long time, the difficult parts can begin to dominate the story we tell ourselves about our day, our health, and eventually even our lives. The 3 + 3 Practice simply asks us to widen the lens. We aren’t removing the difficult information. We are making sure it isn’t the only information our brain records.

What Does This Have to Do With the Brain?

One of the remarkable characteristics of the nervous system is its ability to change in response to experience. This ability is broadly referred to as neuroplasticity. The things we repeatedly practice—whether they are movements, skills, behaviors, thoughts, or patterns of attention—can become easier and more automatic over time because the nervous system is continually adapting to what we do.

Attention is part of that process. When you repeatedly direct your attention toward a particular type of information, you become better at recognizing it. This doesn’t mean that writing three positive things in a journal magically “rewires” your brain overnight. Neuroplasticity is far more complicated than that. But it does mean that repeatedly practicing where you place your attention matters.

Think about what happens when, every evening, you ask yourself, What happened today that was good, better, meaningful, enjoyable, or different? At first, you may have to search for the answers. If you’ve spent months or years focused on pain, stress, or simply getting through the day, identifying three Progress Points may actually feel difficult.

But then something interesting can begin to happen. During the day, you may notice a moment and think, I want to remember that tonight. You may catch yourself responding differently to someone and recognize it. You may notice that you enjoyed something. You may realize that you just did an activity without thinking about your pain for twenty minutes. Instead of these experiences passing by unnoticed, they begin to register.

That is the real goal of the practice. We aren’t trying to manufacture positive experiences. We are training ourselves to become more aware of the positive, meaningful, or progressive experiences that are already occurring.

Why This May Be Especially Important During Healing

Healing rarely happens in a perfectly straight line. This is something I wish more people understood. We tend to imagine that getting better should look like a steady upward trajectory: yesterday I felt this good, today I should feel slightly better, and tomorrow I should feel better still. Real bodies and real nervous systems don’t usually work that way.

Improvement often happens in small pieces. You may sleep five hours instead of four. A few weeks later, you realize you’re sleeping six. You may walk for seven minutes before you need to stop, and eventually that becomes ten. You may still have pain, but suddenly realize there was an hour during dinner when you weren’t thinking about it. You may still become overwhelmed, but perhaps you recover in twenty minutes instead of staying upset for the rest of the evening.

Some of the most meaningful changes may not even appear physical at first. You may become less afraid of your body. You may feel more comfortable leaving the house. You may become more patient with the people around you. You may start laughing more. You may begin making plans again. You may notice that you feel hopeful for periods of time.

If we are only asking, “Does it still hurt?”, we can miss an enormous amount of healing.

This is why I want Progress Points to include the whole person. Physical health matters, but so do your relationships, your confidence, your emotional responses, your ability to experience joy, your sense of safety, your willingness to participate in life, and the way you interact with the world around you.

Why Add Three Intentions for Tomorrow?

After you write down your three Progress Points, the second half of the practice is to write down three Intentions for tomorrow. I deliberately like the word intentions because this isn’t supposed to become another overwhelming to-do list. These aren’t three enormous goals you have to accomplish in order for tomorrow to count as a successful day. They are simply three things you would like to move forward.

An intention might be taking a ten-minute walk, calling your sister, drinking more water, doing your exercises, finishing an email you have been avoiding, taking five quiet minutes before work, going outside at lunch, or going to bed earlier. It could also be relational or emotional: I want to be more patient with my family tomorrow, or I want to pause before reacting when I feel stressed.

There is something valuable about ending the day by first recognizing where you have been and then gently deciding where you would like to go next. Instead of falling asleep thinking about everything you didn’t accomplish or everything you need to fix, you acknowledge three things from today and choose three things that matter tomorrow.

Then you close the journal.

You don’t need to solve your life before you go to sleep.

The 3 + 3 Practice: Step by Step

I recommend trying this every night for at least seven days. You don’t need a special journal or an app. A notebook beside your bed is enough, and the entire exercise should only take a few minutes.

Step 1: Write Down Three Progress Points From Today

Ask yourself: What happened today that was good, better, meaningful, enjoyable, or different?

Remember that these can come from anywhere in your life. They may involve your health, but they can just as easily involve your family, work, relationships, emotions, reactions, choices, or something you simply enjoyed. Don’t judge whether the moment was significant enough to count. If it mattered to you, write it down.

Step 2: Take a Moment to Recognize Them

Before immediately moving on, read your three Progress Points. Give yourself a few seconds to actually register that these things happened. This is an important part of the exercise because we aren’t simply making a list. We are deliberately directing attention toward experiences that might otherwise have been forgotten.

You can think of it as telling your brain, These things happened today, too.

Step 3: Write Down Three Intentions for Tomorrow

Now ask yourself: What are three things I would like to move forward tomorrow?

Keep them reasonable. This isn’t tomorrow’s complete task list. Choose three things that feel meaningful or helpful. Some days they may be practical goals. Other days they may be about how you want to respond, how you want to care for yourself, or how you want to interact with the people around you.

Step 4: Close the Journal

This part may be more important than it sounds. Once you’ve written your three Progress Points and three Intentions, you’re finished. You don’t need to analyze the entire day, grade your performance, or start another list of everything you forgot to accomplish.

Close the journal and let the day be over.

Step 5: Repeat It for Seven Days

Give the practice a week before deciding what you think about it. Pay attention not only to what you write at night but also to what you begin noticing during the day.

You may eventually find yourself in the middle of an ordinary moment thinking, That’s one of my Progress Points.

And when that begins to happen, the practice is doing exactly what I want it to do. You are no longer waiting until bedtime to search for evidence that something went right. You are beginning to notice those experiences while you are actually living them.

Try It Tonight

At the end of today, take out a piece of paper and write down your three Progress Points. Then choose three Intentions for tomorrow. Don’t worry about making them profound, and don’t worry about doing the exercise perfectly.

Just begin paying attention.

Because healing isn’t only about noticing what still hurts or what still needs to change. It is also about recognizing what is already changing, what you are learning, how you are responding differently, what you are enjoying, and all of the small pieces of life that can be easy to overlook when things are difficult.

We are not asking your brain to ignore what is wrong. We are helping it notice what else is true.