Perhps you started keeping a gratitude journal and perhaps you’re already feeling better – happier and more balanced – because your eyes have been opened to how much you have to be grateful for. You’re reaching your goal! You may well also think about stopping or taking a break: you’re feeling good, so why continue with your gratefulness practice?
Sustenance for the mind
We are used to taking medicine only when we’re feeling sick. When we feel OK again, we quit taking it. That makes sense. But rather than viewing your gratitude practice as a medicine – a short term ‘fix’ taken until we feel better – I’d like to invite you to view it more as food for the mind, something that we need to take in (and express) every day to maintain a healthy, balanced state of being.
Keep it simple and be specific
Make it more interesting for yourself by finding categories of things and people in your life to be grateful for. Write them down and then just choose one before you do your daily gratitude practice. Also you could try challenging yourself to be more specific about the subject of your gratitude, rather than generic. For example: I am grateful for … (my cat), because … (she greets me every morning with a purr).
Other suggestions could be family members, co-workers, neighbours, furniture, your plants and pets, politicians, art, every piece of clothing you are wearing, the door knob, your supermarket…
The subject of your gratitude need not be complicated, the reason need not be extraordinary. Look around you, what do you have to be grateful for for right now?
The subject of your gratitude need not be complicated; the reason need not be extraordinary: look around you; what do you have to be grateful for for right now?
Don’t feel you have to ignore the flaws or think only good of them! Gratitude is about bringing balance – about counteracting the obsession of the mind to focus on what is missing and instead, learning to focus upon just how much there is to be positive about.
Enjoy!
Taetske
