A lot of nice things have happened to me lately. I’m down 70 pounds from the beginning of the year. I’ve done a decent job on working on my spending and financial habits. I just got back from a wonderful trip to Bellingham, WA to visit my friends. I don’t need an extender for my seat belt when I fly anymore. In the past few months I’ve randomly ran into two people I haven’t seen in years. It’s a pretty nice list and there’s even more I could add.
I’m certain if you spent a few moments you could come up with a list of your own. Special things that are easy to notice. When an unexpected happiness comes into our lives it’s easy to see it against the background of the regular. Here’s the thing, you don’t only have to be grateful for the big things that stand out. You can be grateful for all the small blessings you tend to overlook because they’ve become commonplace in your life.
If you’re reading this right now you’re still alive. That’s something to be grateful for. And you have some kind of electronic device to read this on. Again, something to be grateful for. You have an internet where you can find blogs like mine, you could be grateful for that as well. Just the events surrounding your reading this post, including having the knowledge it takes to comprehend the language it’s written in, provides a nice list of things to be grateful for.
What if you spent some of tomorrow thinking about the different things in your life from this perspective. What all goes in to your daily commute that you could be grateful for? Do you have your own car? That qualifies. If you don’t then it’s likely you have access to some other conveyance that takes you too and fro. Maybe it’s a friend who drives you, or a subway, or an Uber (or Lyft if that’s your preference). Those are things to be grateful for. Even if you walk, you can be grateful that you have the ability to walk and the energy to do so.
Anything you do tomorrow can provide numbers of opportunities to be grateful. Cooking, typing, watching TV, even cleaning the house. It’s just a matter of looking for the things in them to be grateful about.
Now if each one thing you do has a decent list of things to be grateful about, and you do a great number of things in the day, you’ll have a very long list at the end of the day. That should make you feel pretty happy. And it’s probably the same kind of day you’ve been just existing through for months and years now. The only difference is you’re taking time to realize what’s good in it.
If you spend all that time thinking about how good things are, how grateful you are about these things, you take away time from focusing on things that bring you down. Or things that try to convince you that life isn’t so good. You get to choose what to focus on. It’s your life after all.
To help you along your way I recommend getting a note pad or a journal and just writing down three things a day you’re grateful for. They make apps for smartphones that make this task even easier. You just have to bring the commitment to do it. Try this for a week, or if you can a month, and tell me how it feels. I’m betting if you spend a few minutes every day taking note of three things to be happy for you’ll notice two big differences by the end of the month.
First, I’m betting that along the way you’ll notice that you started writing down more then three things. It’s contagious. Once you notice three things it’s easy to see a fourth or a fifth or a tenth. And when that habit builds and the list gets longer each day you’ll notice a second thing, how much happier you are. After all how can you not be happier when you realize all the blessing in your life.
It’s up to you of course. It’s your life, use your time as you please. But if giving up just a few minutes a day could lead to a happier you in a month, it seems like a small risk of time investment for such a possibly big payout. Take care, and see you soon.
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