I'm excited it's Thursday, are you? I'm also excited about this post on gratitude. A lot of little things are coming together and I am just so forever grateful.
A couple of blogging friends and I are going to start a Monday link-up about being positive in a few weeks and I hope you're ready to join us! We're super excited and I'm trying to be creative and come up with a little button.
In the meantime, I've got Danielle from @ A Writer in Love here to tell us about her gratitude journal! Do you have one of those? They're fantastic!!
I graduated college last December and I couldn’t have been more excited about it. I was graduating a semester early thanks to Advanced Placement class credit from high school, and I was thrilled about getting a head-start in the grown-up world. I had a shiny new Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing, and I wanted to flaunt it!
Then January came around and I realized that being a grown-up was not working out how I had hoped. I had a bad experience at an internship I’d thought would’ve been perfect for me, and I missed my friends and my campus. I felt heartbroken whenever I imagined the cozy basement of the school library, where I would read and write and drink too much coffee. I pined for another Friday evening of drinks and movies in my friends’ apartment. What was I supposed to look forward to?
I’ve kept a journal for as long as I could remember, but I realized that so much of what I was writing was negative and very sad. Certainly, a journal is a proper place to write about the things that are bothering you, but getting stuck in all that pessimism can really affect the rest of your life. So, I remembered something my grandma talked about doing, and I wanted to give it a try.
Keeping a “Gratitude Journal.”
It’s simple, really: take a notebook, or a Word document, or open up the “notepad” app on your smart phone. Think about the things you are thankful for on that particular day. Some people choose to keep a bulleted list, where others (like myself) choose to write in paragraphs. You can be thankful for something big, like your good health, or something small, like the sandwich you ate for lunch. The idea is just this: focus on writing down the good things. Even on the worst of days, I guarantee you can find SOMETHING to be happy about.
Yes, I still keep my regular journal. But as time goes on I spend more time writing positive things in my gratitude journal than lamenting all of the icky, negative things that I used to spend time writing about. Try it out!
What are you thankful for recently?
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This is an excellent idea. Sometimes you just have to have a different perspective on things!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for featuring me! :)
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