So you found your way to yet another one of my blogs and you're probably wondering what's this one all about. I had an idea come to me as I started to work on focusing on my gratitudes as I call them. I wish it would become a real word because my spell checker doesn't like it. But I do and as far as I am concerned it should have a plural form. Because I don't care who you are on this planet, everyone has more then just ONE thing that they are grateful for. But--- sometimes, some of us have a hard time even thinking of one. Especially if it has been a really, really bad day, week, month or year. But that is where the magic is, and where it happens. When, within that bad day, you can manage to make yourself think of even just one, just ONE good thing that you have in your life that you are grateful for, chances are, you could think of something else too. Then it keeps going. I can never stop at just one. But sometimes, when I am full of despair, I don't beat myself up if that is all I come up with.
The point is- when we remember the good things, it changes our mindset. And then, more good can come to us. It is a daily practice. It doesn't mean you don't ever feel bad. But it does help keep things in perspective. A lot!
In my adoption of making this a practice in my life, I have of course my gratitude journals. But I really did better with my "gratitude board". It's just a white board on my fridge, where I can't miss it, to write things down on it each and every day. I simply change the date and erase it each day. Sometimes, a couple of days have gone by, but doesn't mean I'm not writing down my gratitudes, it just means I wrote them in my journal that day instead.
But I kept going and encouraged others to as well. First my youngest daughter. She lives in my home with me and I feel it's important that teenagers remember what they have, since they so often focus on what they don't have. My other daughter joined in and participated as well. I began to encourage her boyfriend to write things down too. Then, I started having anyone that came over to visit, "to make sure to add something to the board".
At some point I began to take pictures of my white board, since it WASN'T some where permanent. From this an idea came to me. I decided that with the new year, that each and every day, I would indeed write on that white board for the entire year of 2012 and take a picture of it. This is where this blog comes in. This is where I will post my white board gratitudes.
Sometimes people have a hard time thinking of things they are grateful for. It's not that they aren't grateful. It's just that, that muscle hasn't been developed or flexed, like the one that gets used much more often, the complaining one. That one is extra strong in my life, and hence my need to balance it out with remembering what I do have to be grateful for. So while my other blog, Life In Transition reflects all of my life's changes and growth, including the sometimes, and sometimes- the Oft times painful stuff, this will be purely about what is good in my life contained on a little white board.
Thanks for venturing over.
