Daily: Reflect on 5 things for which I'm grateful.

I’ve been a slacker when it comes to writing them down, but most mornings since I started this exercise, I spend a few moments in bed before getting up and into my day reflecting on what I am grateful for.

• I am grateful that I am healthy and mobile (by foot, by car, by plane and by heart). I am on-the-go in so many ways and that is good.
• I am grateful for connections, all the strange and wonderful connections that lead people together, that bring people closer and that bring dreams and visions clearer into view.
• I am grateful that while the world often seems cold and people appear more and more disconnected from each other and themselves, there are these bright and clear glimmers of warmth and true soul-to-soul connections.
• I am grateful for instant and text messenging, it’s those little connections and words of love and friendship that can brighten a day, reassure a worry or provide a helping hand across time and distance.
• I am grateful for my friendships (this one seems to be there almost every day) tattered and old and shining or new, distant and close.
• I am grateful that people appreciate me and are generous enough to share their appreciation, admiration and love with me.
• I am grateful that I had a solid foundation of love and nurturing the first three years of my life. That base gave me the ability to be strong when things were scary and less solid and gave me the courage to stand up and protest when I was told I deserved anything less.
• I am grateful for the pain I have known; it’s been a teacher and a window into true empathy and compassion for others.
• I am grateful just for being here and for being a person who questions, who tries to understand all the many answers that are out there waiting for the right questions.

1. my chiropractor. she is a true healer and takes care of more than my spine
2. the wisdom that comes from age. tomorrow I will be 45 years old and I am both amazed and impressed at the power that those years have given me.
3. Pearson’s salted nutrolls. They are so good and I don’t think they’re all that bad for you. Good thing I can’t find them in California and even better that the ones I picked up back in Minneapolis are almost gone!
4. soft, clean cotton sheets
5. for living so close to the ocean. Yesterday in Carmel the ocean was so beautiful it made me want to cry
6. my passion and energy. I like that I am intense and am grateful for possessing a very powerful life force, mind and heart.
7. color. It sounds rather odd, but today I grateful for all the rich and beautiful color in the world. rusty oranges, blood reds, creamy chocolate browns, tranquil blue-green…
8. my silly brilliant daughter who draws mustaches on her face and murals on her jeans.

“Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.”
—Gladys Berthe Stern

Making up for yesterday and adding my gratitude today:

1. The fresh start of each new day. Didn’t accomplish as much as you wanted to yesterday? Didn’t feel good about something last night? Today begins anew and there is unlimited promise and new opportunity to change, to return, to stay, to leave, to start again – fresh.
2. Laughter. Isn’t laughter a wonderful thing? It’s a healing medicine, it’s joy manifested, it spreads smiles and makes pure connections from person to person. I love laughter and am grateful that it so often finds it’s way into my life.
3. The wisdom of the universe that extends beyond my knowing. I am constantly surprised and delighted about how things just seem to fall into place, to fall into my lap, to present themselves in my life at just the time I need them.
4. Tam Kieves, who wrote the book, “This Time I Dance”. She inspires me weeks after putting this book down. I want to meet her one day.
5. Cashmere. My sweater is soft, warm and beautiful; it feels like a soft and tender touch to my skin. mmmmmm…..cashmere.

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
—Marcel Proust

1. living in a country that honors the legacy of Martin Luther King
2. the love songs of Al Green, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Spinners
3. having two older sisters who were teen-agers listening to Motown when I was growing up. My young ears were trained to love a good rhythm from an early age
4. being in a position for the last many years that allows me to set my own hours
5. warm clothes. it’s actually freezing here in northern California!

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

—Melody Beattie

• this king sized bed with nice sheets
• my time alone this morning to spend as I please
• ending a relationship 8 months ago that was unhealthy for us both. i am grateful for the ending and the difficult summer I had afterwards
• having been in that difficult 4-year relationship, because it taught me many new and important life lessons and brought me to today.
• for my wonderful, smart and dear dear daughter.

I’m new at this, so I think I get to make up rules as I go along right?

I ask because computer problems, an all day meeting and a few glasses of wine with some dear friends last night prevented me from writing down my 5 things yesterday.

I did however conjure up things and people several times yesterday that I am grateful for, but I just couldn’t or didn’t get to a computer to put them here.

So I think that counts right? I’m covered for yesterday just by “reflecting” on gratitude? The goal didn’t say explicitly that I had to write it down…

Anyway, that’s how I’m going to count it. I’m going to try each day to feel AND to express my gratitude, in the morning before starting my day; but I’m not going to beat myself up if I can’t get to writing it down until later or if I can’t manage to write it down at all.

This morning I feel thankful…

1. that my computer didn’t get damaged by the glass of I knocked off my bedside table, spilling water on it last night in the middle of the night.
2. for the friendships of women, both past, present and new
3. that my sister went to a cardiologist for tests and that her heart problems don’t seem to be anything more serious than learning to handle her stress in a more healthy way.
4. because I am healthy and feeling healthier than I have in a long time.
5. for the wonders and magic of synchronicity in my life and in the universe. I want to be more open to the world’s surprise gifts.

My own life has been touched often by synchronicity, so much so that now I get on an airplane expecting the passenger in the next seat to be surprisingly important to me, either just the voice I need to hear to solve a problem or a missing link in a transaction that needs to come together…
—Deepak Chopra

Today I am grateful…

1. that Vox has a rich text editor; it makes this easier than learning “formating codes” like 43 Things uses.
2. that my body seems to know when to wake up even when I have not gotten enough sleep.
3. for the Internet, email and IM which makes it easier to connect to the people I care about and meet new people to care about.
4. for the smart talented women I know and who inspire me (Deborah, Karen, Laurel, Rees, Annabelle, Ginger, Jane A, Joy, Winnie, Anna, Hilary, Ali, Kristina, Kelly G, Mary M, Jane Z, Leah, Julie J, Joan O… and as of this week two new wonderful women…ArLyn and Robin.
5. for my good health. Today and I feel a little tired, but physically strong and very alive.

Your experience of life is not based on your life, but on what you pay attention to.
(excerpted from Gregg Krech’s audio program Life is a Matter of Attention)

• I am grateful that my daughter has the dedication and determination to participate in debate class even though it starts at 7 am on Tuesdays and we need to leave the house by 6:20am. I am grateful that she has decided to stick to doing this and that I can help her by getting her there on time.

• I am grateful that I have a closet full of clothes to wear and that they all either fit me just right or are too big.

• I am grateful for my large selection of footwear. ;-)

• I am grateful that I have friends who like me and want to connect with me and connect me to other people they know and like (meetings today and the one with ArLyn yesterday).

• I am grateful that people value my opinions and perspective and seek out my advice and help

• I am grateful for Dave who is starting to share his story with me and allowing me to get to know him and to begin to develop a unique and beneficial friendship (not friends with benefits!) for us both.

• I am grateful for new connections to people in general.

• I am grateful that the goal I set for myself for excercise was 4x per week because when I didn’t have time to get on the elliptical this morning it was OK. And having a goal that gave me some wiggle room on “daily” exercise, allowed me to be there for my daughter last night when she awoke in the middle of the night crying and wanting to sleep in bed with me. We stayed up too late and I had to get her to school early this morning (see first bullet pt). So I could not excercise and manage to get ready for my day in SF. Having a daily naikan practice, but an exercise goal of just 4x per week allowed me to be grateful that I could be there for AB last night and not feel bad for missing exercise this morning.

• I am grateful for ALL (each and every one, good and bad, wonderful or horrible) of the experiences that have brought me to today; they have been my teachers and my lessons.

Have a wonderful and gratitude-filled day! There are many blessing in our lives and all around us; I am learning to awaken to them each day. I hope the same for you.

Patty

I’m doing this exercise, this practice of Naikan, in the mornings as I start my day because I want to begin the day with as much gratitude as I can. It might be easier to do at night, when I have the whole day to reflect on, but I like having it at the start of the day, to walk squarely into whatever is to come anchored in gratitude.

I’ve been up for almost two hours already (because I crashed so early last night), but I’m going to do this before I get out of bed each day. (Actually, I committed to myself to do it at least 3x per week to not disappoint myself if I missed a day or 4).

Today I am grateful for:

• having a nice home. owning a nice home. making that a goal as an adult and being able to achieve it…this is the third home I have owned a home. my parents never bought a home and i am grateful that I grew up feeling like other people owned wonderful things like houses and we only borrowed the monopoly pieces they didn’t want for themselves. that childhood in a rented house taught me to be resourceful and to do (many) thing differently than they did.

• my daughter, who I can hear taking a shower this morning. she set her alarm and got up on time without me having to wake her and start the day off in opposition to each other. (she’s a teen-ager; they like to sleep).

• licorice. i love black licorice. And it’s not too bad for you, especially if you get the natural kind and don’t eat too much of it. I am grateful that Trader Joe’s has such good licorice and it’s not very expensive…and there’s some downstairs waiting for me eat anytime I want today.

• my cat Frankie (and Meisha) who is meowing and rubbing himself up against me wanting me to come downstairs and feed him. I am grateful that he survived his near fatal liver failure a few years ago and that he was able to be nursed back to health. It taught me that I really did love him and he was more than “just any cat”. He showed me his gratitude by being a “changed beast” afterwards…more affectionate, more friendly and more open to love and attention.

• indoor plumbing. I am off to use the bathroom (too much information?) and, if there is any hot water left after my daughter’s shower, I am off to take a shower after exercising on the eliptical (another of my weekly goals).

Have a day filled with love, laughter, smiles and gratitude!

PM

I’m still pretty confused by this site, but I’m going to give it a shot and try to use it to record daily gratitudes. Here’s today’s.

• being smart and resourceful
• having had a difficult childhood, which forced me to learn lessons early that some people never learn in a lifetime
• my daughter, who has taught me about love and possibilities for more love
• my daughter’s talents, which are teaching me about the value of nurturing your true gifts and passions
• living in northern California, where this beautiful morning (and yesterday too) there are birds chirping outside my bedroom window and the sun is shining in a clear blue sky.
• for my realtors, Shawn and Susan, who took care of me when I was so worried about buying this house and who I now consider friends,
• http://patty.vox.com where I have made new friendships and where I have been writing and journaling again after a long long hiatus. I am grateful that Vox is there and that I have been using it as a tool for creativity, mindfulness and openings.
• for my past relationships, because they have all, regardless, taught me many important lessons. And in some cases they have transformed into true and real friendships. I am grateful that I am still connected to Steve and Dan especially this morning.