Early in her career she made it a daily priority to list 5 things she was grateful for. She managed to keep this up for ten years. But then her entries became sporadic.
A few years ago while re-reading some of her old daily gratitude lists she asked herself: 'why have I lost the joy of simple moments?'
But she didn't blame the busy-ness because during those ten years of unbroken gratitude journaling she was just as busy.
She reflected how she had accumulated so much wealth, responsibility and possessions. But her happiness had not exponentially grown. She felt she'd become too stretched and too busy doing things to feel much of anything- or to have the time to even feel delight.
She'd lost sight of the power of gratitude in her life, and was focussing instead on her have-nots.
She writes that she's back on track journaling -electronically now- whenever there's a grateful moment. And that this has caused new shiftings in her experience.
So after reading this article, I went and started my own gratitude journal.
How about you? Do you keep one? Want to start?
( *November 2012 Oprah magazine )
(photo credit; Antti Rahikka, connection, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/)
Your post reminds me of what Mary Baker Eddy wrote: "What is gratitude but a powerful camera obscura, a thing focusing light where love, memory, and all within the human haeart is present to manifest light."
ReplyDeletethat is a really lovely quote. Thanks.
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