“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” Melody Beattie
My ability to write gratitudes was the beginning to think positively for me. It didn’t come easily and was not automatic. Like everything else though, practice made for progress, and it became easier as I continued on each day.
For those of us in any kind of recovery program, we saw we never were real quick when it came to putting strong empowering visuals to our words, especially if it meant expressing joy. Oh sure, we knew how to express anger and resentments; but, could we see with equal measure, the goodness that resided somewhere deep down in each of us? No. So, here is an exercise to bring to the surface, a balance of positivity necessary to infuse thoughts throughout our day with power to change our perspective.
Why are gratitudes important? Because many of us came here feeling short-changed, believing we have nothing to be grateful for. We were not born without gratitude, we have been conditioned for any number of reasons. Our job, if interested, is to begin a fact-finding mission to find the truth about who we are and what we’re really made of. A dear friend once said, “In the Spiritual World, Believing is Seeing.” Believing that we all are born in equal measure, with strong and negative attributes, journaling gratitude becomes the spiritual vehicle to a change of perspective. We sort out negativity and replace it instead, with positive, affirming threads of confidence.
Before you begin, please visit my Blog entitled Journaling Basics to help you become prepared and inspired.
Try to Write Five Gratitudes Per Day! It would be helpful to begin each gratitude with, “I am grateful for _____________________________ because IT MAKES ME FEEL __________________. That’s right. How does the person, place or thing you’re writing about make you feel?
Your major book store will have a book entitled The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi that will be extremely useful if you need help identifying positive words to describe where you are right now. Another useful source is to go to Thesaurus.com which has also been immensely useful.
Don’t take yourself too seriously, have fun, and you will be amazed before you’re halfway through!