Skip to main content

Gratitude


I am practicing writing things I am grateful for in my Happynichi (ok, I don’t doodle enough in it to be a real one… as I have said before I need to work on it). In doing this, it makes me look for more things that make me grateful. This has given me a different perspective on my life.  I feel like I am getting less frustrated and enjoying life a little more.  I sit at my planner at night and take the time to jot down my thoughts.

This is where the keeping a mood tracker or gratitude list fits in.  Looking back on things that make you thankful gives you that feeling again.  I know we don’t all write just our plans in our planners, but we write things that happened and make us feel a certain way.  We like to make our planners pretty and filled with color because they make us happy, more than likely we already are jotting down those grateful moments.

I also think that sometimes we might not be able to fully express our gratitude to the person we want to.  Like when you go to Aldi and there is already a quarter in the cart or if you are fortunate enough to have someone pay it forward in the drive thru line. Sometimes you thank someone and you don’t get a response… its ok, you know you did it. They know you are grateful and sometimes they don’t know what to say.

This brought me back to a meeting I had at an old job where we had a guest speaker from The Mayo Clinic come and talk to us about gratitude, Amit Sood, MD. Dr. Sood has some great articles on the Mayo Clinic website as well as studying happy people. In this session, he gave us assignments for the first thing we do when we wake up in the morning, before we even get out of bed – the easiest one is to think of 5 people you are grateful for and why you are thankful for them.  To take those few minutes, laying there thinking about people and being thankful to them, it gives you a positive start on your day. I try to use this practice every day; it doesn’t have to be people either.  Eventually you start to feel repetitive, but you can use moments or pets.

Resources other things to look at:




Image credit:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Starting Something New

We’ve all started something new.   It’s thrilling, scary, nerve wracking; yet, it being new only lasts for a short time.   The thing that makes us or breaks us is do we keep up with it.   Many times the thing we are starting is being “healthier” going for walks or eating better.   Getting ready for my walk I can tell you I started waking up earlier and going for walks every morning. I decided that I want to be healthier for my son and not be the person who goes to work, comes home, and sleeps (which is what I was doing every day). I wasn’t being the best mom I could be.   Now I have been doing it for 2 weeks, so I feel like it’s still pretty new, but it is part of my routine.   I have learned that if I miss a day (because I missed one) I am tired and feel a little distracted throughout the day.   I am a much better person if I do it. I do log these walks (the fact I do it) in my planner with a HOORAY for me.   It is part of my FIT goal an...

Clearance Finds

OMG! I love this time of year, when all the back to school items go on clearance.   I am OBSESSED with pens, pencils, paper, storage containers, if it is writing related, I WANT it. This year is killing me because I am following all these people on IG and see one clearance sale after another.   I feel fortunate that I have a spouse who will support my clearance sale habit! I saw the $0.36 and $0.40 planners at Michaels and he was out so he ran over with me and I found the deal too! Everyone was posting about the mid-liners and I was like “I need those now!” Messaged him with the picture of the mid-liners and he drops off 3 packages from Walgreens for me J . It’s hard though, because how much can you actually use? I figure that the cheap planners gives me some extra discs, stickers and the planner could be used for a handful of things.   I think I will start the memory planning and I think one of those big teacher planners will work great for that. But what will ...