Gratitude isn't just for Thanksgiving

Reaching one thousand in my gratitude journal!

Hi Everyone, Danica Favorite here, and I wanted to share about a subject very important to me. I love Thanksgiving, because it makes us stop and think about all the things we're grateful for. But it bothers me that many of us only take one day a year to sit down and express all the things we're truly thankful for.

Almost two years ago, I started a journaling practice that really changed my life. I keep a gratitude journal. Every day I write down ten things I'm grateful for. When I first started, the rule was I couldn't be grateful for the same thing twice, but now that I have over a thousand things on my list, I've given myself a little more room to double up, as long as I don't do it too often!

Sometimes I skip a day or two, but I find that if I go more than a couple of days without writing in my journal, I don't feel as good or have as good of a day. It's easy to focus on the hard things in life, but when I take time to remember the good, and to count my many blessings, it's amazing to see how much better my life looks. In fact, the easiest way for me to turn any bad day around is to look at that journal, and see how, despite whatever bump I've hit, I have a pretty amazing life.

I'm always skeptical of claims of things that supposedly change people's lives, but can I let you in on a little secret about my life? Ever since I started keeping my gratitude journal, everything in my life has gotten better. It didn't happen overnight, and I can't point to a specific link between the two, but despite having the same ups and downs of life, some higher ups, and some lower downs, I have to say that overall, I am a much happier person. My life is a thousand times better.

It's not that everything bad in my life magically disappeared. I've had some really bad days. Crushing disappointments. But I think I handle them better. And sometimes, in the midst of those bad things, when I can still find things to be grateful for, I can't see the bad anymore. As for the good, I find so many small things to celebrate, from the snow glistening on the trees, to enjoying a peaceful moment with my tea, to hugs from my daughter, and a thousand (literally!) other things in between, I know that I have an incredible life. Even when I'm not writing things down, I often stop and pause in gratitude throughout my day because I know that I have so much to be grateful for!

How about you? Have you ever kept a gratitude journal? How can you add a little gratitude to your day?

Gratitude and Attitude or How The Evil Snowplow Driver Is No More!

(this post can also be found at www.alittlegoodnewstoday.org)
We’ve had a difficult Christmas season, having lost an uncle and having my father-in-law taken to hospital, where he still is, awaiting heart surgery. My mother-in-law is trying to stay upbeat, and we’re all trying our best to encourage her, but it’s what strangers are doing in our lives that make the difference here.
First up, just after my father-in-law fell ill, my niece found herself stuck up in Ottawa, and her father and her uncle decided to drive up to Quebec to meet her halfway. The trouble was, that horrible big storm we had before Christmas was barreling down on us, and those of us at home waited for news of their safe return.
It didn’t come. But then we did get word of something just as good, maybe even better. My brother-in-laws decided to pull off the road somewhere up north of Fredericton. They drove into the nearest driveway and asked if they could park there for a few hours until the storm died down.
The kind family in the house wouldn’t hear of that. They invited them in, offering them shelter to my niece and my brother-in-laws for the night, plus a few warm meals.
The next day, when the storm had passed, my brother-in-laws shoveled out the driveway in gratitude before they left. Those of us waiting at home were thankful that this family, whose last name we still don’t know, had a spirit of charity.
Now, you may be wondering what this story has to do with evil snowplow drivers. I’m getting to that. Those who know me know that I always called the snowplow driver evil because of his remarkable ability to batter my mailbox, fill in my driveway, and dump incredibly copious amounts of snow directly in front of my mailbox, when all around me seems to be clear. And those of you in rural locations know the plight of the rural mailbox and of the mail couriers. We need to keep our boxes clear, something impossible with the bulls-eye marked on them for the snowplow driver.
Not so anymore. We had a terrible storm New Year’s Eve, and it lasted well into the January first. It wasn’t until the second were we able to get out to the end of the driveway. My brother-in-law (one of the ones mentioned earlier) and his wife came over from next door to help us, as we’d planned to visit my father-in-law in the hospital that day. We were making very little headway, when, over the crest up the road came...you guessed it, the snowplow driver. We scattered like mice, cringing at what he might do to the meagre work we’d achieved so far.
He passed us.
Then stopped.
Then backed up.
And then...he graded out our driveway with that huge front blade of his.
My sister-in-law cheered, claiming it was her old face that caused his sympathy. Whatever the reasons were, I swore on that day that I would never call him the ‘evil snow plow driver’ again. My sister-in-law and I hugged and cheered and waved as he drove off.
We don’t know who this man was. Though we saw his face, all we could tell was he was a young man, brown hair, small nose. But to us, he was the epitome of the season. Like that family up north of Fredericton, he came to our family’s rescue. We are a family whose Christmas has been tough, sad, scary, even. And yet, in the midst of it, there were two bright points, two acts of kindness that show us how much people really do care.
Thank you to both the family who cared for ours during the storm, and the snowplow driver who showed a little compassion to us this past week.
I hope their new years will be as blessed as they have made ours.