Well Naturalistas, Thanksgiving is almost upon us. And what better time to focus on the things we are thankful for. I know what you're thinking, you should be doing that all year ... and I have been! December will make one full year that I have religiously kept a Grateful Journal for each day. I got this idea from Oprah, who is such a great inspiration by the way. I was not successful at it on the first try. I always tried to pick up the habit during some particularly unsatisfactory period in my life and somehow found myself just going through the motions and not feeling truly thankful. But for the past year, this journaling has really helped me in my outlook on life. The secret is only to write things you are truly thankful for that particular day which means going through all the events of your day and maybe even re-thinking your perspective on them. It's a challenge because some days seem just all bad, but those are the days you need it the most. You will feel instantly better about your day and your life. It's usually little things. For example, I'm thankful for Family Feud because it was a half hour of amusement that made me laugh and brightened my day a bit. Honestly, that's what I write. You'll find yourself eventually going through your day looking for things to be thankful for. I'll notice the sun setting on the horizon and take the time to be truly grateful for that moment rather than glancing it and just keep going commiserating over all the things that are going wrong in my day or in my life. It's important not to mindlessly list things like "health, family, food" although those are things to be thankful for. But it's about each day being unique. I am thankful for those things everyday, it's important to try to list unique things for the day or else you fall in to a rut and it just feels like a useless exercise. If you are particularly thankful for your health today because you met someone who's suffering and struggling with health issues and it really gave you perspective and made you realize how lucky you are not to have health issues then go ahead and list it. That is the idea.
Then you can even look back and remind yourself of things you wrote a month or a year ago. I have a full year to look back on and it makes me smile to read about what happened one particular day that inspired me to feel grateful. It makes me realize that in the grand scheme of things, I'm pretty lucky. No matter what the circumstance, you can always find something to be thankful for no matter how minute.
Today one major thing I am thankful for is my viewers. Yes you! I figured out (finally) how to check my stats and I am pleased to see that people are actually visiting my blog and hopefully reading the content and benefiting from it. That will definitely be 1 of the 5 things I list at the end of the day. I hope I will inspire you all to find reasons to be thankful as well.
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