Today is a Good Day
“Just waking up in the morning gotta thank God, I don’t know but today seems kinda odd ” Ice Cube, It Was a Good Day
You wake up, roll over, hit snooze on your alarm and grab your phone. You check in on social media, maybe the news or TikTok, and it’s already a bad day before you get out of bed. What if one of the keys to having a good day is to kick it off with gratitude, similar to the way that Ice Cube does with his song?
Ice Cube’s It Was a Good Day was released in 1993 on his solo album Predator. The song, featuring a sample from the Eisley Brothers’ Footsteps is the highest charting single of Cube’s career - eventually climbing to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot RnB/Hip Hop Songs chart and to No. 27 on the UK charts. As of the date of this post, the song has 544 million plays on Spotify and the music video posted on Youtube (and shared below) has 160 million views.
What makes this such a good theme song for a good day? Ice Cube kicks off the track with, “Just waking up in the morning gotta thank God, cause today seems kinda odd…” Throughout the remainder of the song, the singer references a numbers of people, events, and things that he’s thankful for. This intentional attitude of gratitude and Ice Cube’s mindfulness of the seemingly “little” or “trivial” things in life connect listener. Research confirms the correlation between gratitude of a general well being; intentionally having gratitude can be helpful for improving positive affect, your own happiness, and general life satisfaction. Gratitude leads to improvement in stress levels and in social support. This song resonates because Ice Cube models what it’s like to express gratitude, reminds us to be grateful, and gives us the means to do so.
A few practical things you can do to practice gratitude:
1.) Take a moment and reflect on some things that you can be thankful for. Don’t just list them off; think about why you’re thankful for this person/place/thing/experience etc.
2.) Tell someone in your life that you’re thankful for them. And tell them why you’re thankful for them.
3.) Weekly challenge: Start your day by writing out 5 things that you’re grateful for. Tomorrow morning, add 5 more to the list but don’t re-list anything from the previous day. See how many days you can go!
