What is gratitude?
What is gratitude? Why should I stop to think about all that I’m grateful for? What do I have to be thankful for?
Gratitude is being thankful. Gratitude is remembering all the good things we have in life. We have a lot to be thankful for and sometimes we forget that.
Where did all this gratitude come from?
I was sitting in my car, in crawling traffic on a Monday morning. This was after having driven for three hours. I had got up early to make this drive. The drive had given me a lot of time alone with my thoughts.
I’ve read recently about thought loops. Long ago this would have been an excellent opportunity to land in a negative thought loop. I now have tools that I’ve learned that help me with times like these.
This time alone with my thoughts had let me think of what was hard in my life at that time. Luckily I had my tools with me. I thought to myself, this may be hard right now, but so many other things are good.
I thought, why not start a gratitude journal. A friend of mine has started a website called Milli Me. It’s all about Gratitude, journaling and I AM affirmations. I had helped get the website up and running and this had made me think about journaling.
Being me it needed to be a bit special. I know a bit about websites so thought I’d build a website. I could use this website as a learning experience. Firstly, I’d be learning to write SEO-optimised copy. Secondly, I’d be learning useful general SEO skills. Thirdly, it would be good to have some experience blogging to apply to my business ventures.
Why should we be grateful?
That car trip and that dose of the “Monday blues” was the catalyst I needed to create this website/blog. I have so much to be thankful for and writing it down reminds me of that.
“If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75 percent of the world.
Unknown author
If you fit these conditions then you have something to be thankful for. For me this about recognising all the reasons to be grateful, from the smallest all the way up to the largest.
Where to from here?
I get hooked on keeping streaks on silly games. I’m at one hundred and something consecutive days of Duolingo at the moment. I’d had a two hundred day streak on a fishing game on my phone. So why not have a streak of something even more useful?
I’ve told myself that I’m going to do three hundred and sixty-five days of gratitude. This is my goal. So far I’ve stuck to it for just over fifty days.
If you want to come along for the ride the most logical place to start is Day 1, you can read it here. This blog is my proof that life doesn’t suck, and this is where you can see why it doesn’t suck.
If you’ve stumbled across this I hope it provides some value for you and you can take a moment to stop and think about what you are grateful for and why your life doesn’t suck.
I hope you enjoy it.
Graytful