Gratitude

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog. Let’s be real — it’s February and it’s hard to write about anything to be grateful for right now. I’ve had some super stressful things happen to me lately. I’m not going to go into the specifics of the bad things, because this blog is supposed to be about the good things. It’s just going to be that much more challenging for me to write this blog. Honestly, that’s probably a good thing. We need to be grateful for all the good things in our lives, despite the bad times, and most importantly, those good things will lift us up when times are hard.

I only started to be actively grateful for things pretty recently — probably about 2 or 3 years ago now, when I first got into bullet journaling. I was looking for collections to add to my bullet journal, and I came across another lady from Youtube; Helen Colebrook. I really enjoyed watching her set up her monthly bullet journal and she included a Monthly Gratitude and an Affirmation spread each month. I think I liked the end result more than the actual setup, because she made it look so aesthetically pleasing.

Now this was a point in my life when I was feeling pretty down and I got into journaling really hard. It helped me deal with my emotions. When I first started bullet journaling, it didn’t even cross my mind that I would eventually be making videos about it on Youtube. ( I actually started my channel with makeup videos!) When I started, it was more to get into the artsy end of things. I wasn’t thinking about how a bullet journal could really help my mental health.

I started to research gratitude and affirmations because I honestly didn’t know what it was. Not that I wasn’t grateful for things in my life — I grew up on a farm in rural Alberta. There was a time when we didn’t have running water, and we were about an hour and a half from the city. We went out once a week, and I didn’t have many material objects. The things I did have, I cherished a whole lot. I spent all of my time outside, playing with my dogs, even in winter and life was good.

I feel like our kids’ generation do not know the meaning of ‘to be grateful for something’. I mean, it could just be my kid, but I’m seeing a lot of children who have all the things, and still, they want more. I did promise myself that if I ever had kids, they would want for nothing, so I suppose some of that is my own fault. However, my son expects running water and flushable toilets, because he has never seen a time when we didn’t have that.

Sometimes I feel like I struggle with the meaning of gratitude. I mean, there are times when I’m super happy about life and I just love the whole world — everything is amazing because I’m happy. There are times I do feel grateful for what I have when I look back on my past — things weren’t always good, and I wasn’t always in a good place. Then there are the times when something bad happens, and I turn negative. I wish I had more — bigger house, more stuff, or to win the lottery and get out of debt. Sometimes I ask myself why other people always seem to have it so good — why can’t that be me?

Here’s what I figured out: It’s great to be happy, but we need to practice gratitude every day so when you run into the bad times, you don’t turn into that negative shrew I described above. To actively practice gratitude every day, you need to work at it. It does not happen overnight, that’s for sure. It can be a thought in your brain, but the way I found to actually work for me was to write it down. I started small at first. I wrote down one thing I was grateful for, every day, for an entire month. The first few days were easy, because I listed my kids, my significant other, my mom, my dogs, etc…Soon, it stared to get more difficult. I had to get creative in my thinking.

People say it takes time to start and maintain a habit. You need to do the same thing every day for a while — it usually takes me anywhere between one to two months to train my brain to make something stick. I noticed over time, that the longer I wrote down daily gratitudes, it was easier to think of something I was grateful for. I would start to write three things a day instead of just one. I would usually do this in the morning, and pick three things from the previous day, usually different every single time. Eventually I noticed a change in myself — I still had bad days, but if there was an event that got me down, I would bounce back to happy more quickly than before.

Don’t get me wrong — I am an optimist and I believe that people are mostly good. I am not that quirky, annoying optimist that never believes anything could go wrong though. I’m pretty realistic in my optimism. I just look at situations differently now and try to find the silver lining. For instance, just last week, I had a series of events that triggered a mini meltdown. It was like, one semi-bad thing happened, and I was ok, I could handle it but I felt crappy. Then something really bad happened that got me really upset, and then the furnace broke! Seriously. People usually say bad things come in three’s — well, they were right. The furnace breaking was ok though, because it was a pretty easy fix — good thing too, because it was -40 degrees Celsius out that night!

To be completely honest, I haven’t written my Gratitudes in awhile. If you check out my Monthly Bullet Journal videos on Youtube, you’ll see. In saying that, I have trained my brain to do it automatically. When something goes wrong, I always try to find some benefit in it. I mean, maybe if your car breaks down, you’ll meet a hot mechanic. LOL.

I do find it more challenging in our current situation with the Pandemic to be a grateful person. I also suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, and it’s important for me to practice mindfulness and self care, more now than ever. I always say that in order to properly care for others, you need to take care of yourself first. This is NOT being selfish, but it is necessary.

So, if you want to start practicing gratitude in your life, perhaps the things that I did will also work for you. When you have never done something before, it’s always better to start off small and work towards something greater. That way, you won’t be as likely to burn out. I wish you the best of luck! Remember to always search for that silver lining!

xoxo SAN 💜