Gratitude

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading my blog and for being a part of my journey. I am truly grateful that you’ve allowed me into this small moment of your day. For me, gratitude is the most important piece to living a happy and fulfilling life. It opens a channel for good feelings, good people, and good events to flow into my life. My world is exponentially better when I am actively practicing gratitude on a daily basis.

When I first started going to therapy in my 20s, I had an incredible therapist (hey Darla!) who introduced me to the practice of gratitude when she gave me an assignment to make a list of ten things I was grateful for every day for a week. I started off strong, but after a few days it was getting harder to come up with new material. Then, the magic happened. I started paying attention throughout the day for things to put on my list that evening, which started the process of consciously marking all the good things that were happening to me. It was amazing how many good things I was noticing!

We get more of what we pay attention to. I call this the Red Truck Theory. If I asked you how many red trucks you’ve seen so far today, you would probably say not many. But if I ask you to count how many red trucks you see next time you’re on the road, I bet you’ll see quite a few. Is that because there are more red trucks out there? Of course not. It’s because now you’re looking for them. The same is true for good things in our lives and in our relationships. When we start consciously counting them and marking them, we start to see them all over the place.

My assignment to you starting today is to make an active practice of gratitude. Notice all the good things that happen to you during the day today, and write at least ten of them down this evening. Keep this up through the end of the year and let me know what changes you notice!