At the start of last year I came up with an experiment – every day I would take a moment in the morning to add to a list of gratitude. You can read my previous blog entries about this here and here.
To recap; Every morning I would open a Word document where I had a numbered list. I’d then take a moment and add to it. At least 1 thing, but as many as I felt in that moment. I usually spent no more than 2 or 3 minutes total on the whole exercise.
The power of the list began to grow as the numbers grew. Since it was an auto-incremental list, it would show me the current number. The higher the number got the happier it made me that I had so much to be grateful for.
The things I became grateful for got smaller and smaller. Instead of just being grateful for my family, I might write that I was grateful that my kids had a good day at school yesterday, that my friend and I saw some dragonflies in my back yard, or that Robin and I had a nice chat when I came home. It became about small moments I experience every single day.
Sometimes I would forget to add to the list, and sometimes days would pass, but I would just continue when I remembered.
The final number as of this writing is 716. I managed to write down 716 things I felt grateful for this year. That is 20 pages of writing.
The sheer volume of it is awesome. How can anyone feel bad when looking at 716 things they were grateful for this year? It really reprograms your mind and perspective and hardens you to all the doom and gloom we are overwhelmed with.
The really cool thing is when I scroll back through this list, it sparks memories. Tons of forgotten moments, but as soon as I read them again it sparks the memory in my mind.
The other unexpected pleasure of this list is I was able to search for people’s names in it. I was having a phone conversation with a friend, and while they were on the line, I was able to tell them they were in my list 9 times. I then read them back some of the things I wrote that they were involved in. This sparked memories in their own head, plus whatever that made them feel to know in that moment they were appreciated enough to go into my list of gratitude.
I see it as the list starting to reflect outward, like a mirror reflecting sunshine.
I also know that the stronger, healthier and more optimistic I am, the world is better served by that version of me.
Only good came out of this exercise.
I think I will continue to add to my list, but without any further goals or objectives. I committed myself to doing 1 year, which has concluded. I think I’ll just leave it as a task that I do and see what happens, but with no need to tie myself to any experiment.
I wonder how big my list might get?
How do you celebrate gratitude in your own life? I’d love to know.
Happy NY Chris, Robin & kiddos! All the best for 2020. Loved reading your post and the list is such a great idea. Another version could be family members writing them weekly on small pieces of paper and popping them into a mason jar over the year then end of year you can open the jar and read them out together. But I like the personal list because you can reflect throughout.
For our family teaching our kids about small acts of kindness and how it can brighten someone’s day is important. Just this morning my daughter (6yrs) called her grandpa to say Happy NY and that she loved him. I knew he was likely out with his coffee buddies (and he was), so getting that call and hearing her little voice made his entire day. Later he texted to tell me that. Mission accomplished and I used it as a learning experience to show her how he felt from 1 minute of her time. She has the biggest smile on her face.
Wishing everyone another decade of happiness.
XsTaCey yep…its me! Missed you all in November 2019 but very much there in spirit.
Hi Stacey, welcome to the blog! You are not the first ex-raver to show up here, glad you can join the discussion. 🙂
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on gratitude. My parents live for the phone calls from their grandchildren, for certain.
I was able to screen grab and send my mother a handful of the things from my list today that had the word “mom” in them. I sent them as a text message. Each one is a memory from something that happened this year. I feel like I’ve found a tool for gratitude bombing people :).