I am grateful this evening for having a relatively productive day. When I look at the sum total of all the things I need to get done, it might look less productive; but when I look at the energy I had while working and what I did manage to accomplish, I feel pretty good. My goal is to have a productive week as well. We’ll see how that goes. Every new day brings something different–even “routine” days have different flavors and textures to them. Many days I wake feeling stress about some of the life questions and issues I am facing at the moment. I have to acknowledge that at times I am quite proud of myself in terms of my ability to keep putting one foot in front of the other and functioning in the midst of the struggle. Proud of myself isn’t quite the right word for it, though I am hard pressed to think of anything better at the moment. I guess I am grateful that I have been exercising the muscles of standing strong in the face of the challenges, remaining externally calm even when my insides are roiling and my head feels like it’s going to detach from my shoulders from the stress, and drawing on that wellspring of courage and hope that keeps me going.
It seems like everywhere I’ve looked over the past few days I see messages about the power of perseverance, of triumphing over challenge and struggle, of gratitude as a key to overcoming life’s difficulties. It has been somewhat gratifying to have my practice of gratitude validated. This is not about how cool or smart or trendy I am; rather these messages are signs indicating to me that I am indeed on the right track in deliberately cultivating a gratitude practice. Like most regular human beings, I fall down, even in my gratitude practice. I become depressed, anxious, angry and any manner of so-called “negative” emotions. What makes me so happy about gratitude is that there’s sort of an automatic reset switch that is triggered at some point in my downward spiral that halts the plummet, refills the depleted cells and gratitude once again spills forth.
For me, the importance of this blog is that it provides for me a certain measure of accountability. If I were keeping a personal gratitude journal or list or log that I kept only for myself, I might tend to slip up and miss a few days and perhaps even stop doing it altogether. Writing a public blog means that I have committed to someone outside of myself that no matter what’s going on–positive or less positive–I will examine my life each day to find those things that I am grateful for, write about them, and publish that for the world (or for the 20 or so folks who regularly visit this page.) Writing for you, helps me keep writing for me, if that makes sense. My daughter asked me a few weeks ago, “What’s going to happen when you get to day 365? You’ll have written a year’s worth of blogs. Then what?”
The short answer is: I don’t know, but I don’t think I’m going to stop writing. I might not even slow down. I was talking to my friend and web designer the other day about changes I want to make to my websites and perhaps that I want to make to this blog. At the very least I am ready to change the look of of the blog but for the time being not the subject matter. Until I know what those changes are going to look like, and because blog # 365 is just a few days away, I can tell you that not much is going to change. I have too many other things going on to make radical changes at this point. But in the weeks and months ahead those of you who’ve been reading for a while will likely notice some changes. The other thing I am just starting is a Twitter account for Lessons in Gratitude . You can follow me at @LessonGratitude. Mind you, I am just learning how to use Twitter, so don’t expect a whole flurry of tweets yet. But I plan on putting gratitude out there right along with Oprah and all the other folks tweeting and blogging and facebooking on the subject. Stay tuned. Gratitude is going global. What are you grateful for this evening?
