2010 started out on a real “Low Note” for me. Not much was going my way and I was ready for a change. As I pressed in to make it a good year, taking baby steps to move forward daily, I discovered so many treasures along my journey. I decided I wanted to end the year on a “High Note”. 31 days of Gratitude! December is the happiest month of the year for some, but for many, it is the most depressing, most stressful month of the year. So here we go, daily encouragement, tips to living raw during the holidays and helping 2010 go out with a bang as the best year of our lives!
December is an incredible Month for gratitude as well as unsolicited kindness. The point of this 31 Days of Gratitude Blog is to help us stretch ourselves; think out of the box; take time to stop and smell the aromas that are a part of this season; to see outside of our own little world; to go beyond the call of duty to encourage others, even when we may feel discouraged! Watch and see – it’s contagious. Sure some people may look at you as if you are crazy, but then again, you may be the only ray of sunshine in somebody’s gray world or you may even be the reason someone chooses not to take their own life today. Maybe you will notice yourself feeling compassion and empathy in ways that are new to you. Encourage those in your circle of love to take the 31 Days of Gratitude challenge with you.
I wrote the following post in July of this year. Looking back at it, I realize how far I have come in a short time and how much more I still have to learn and grow. Thanks for joining me for 31 Days of Gratitude!
I am grateful to be able to wake up every day happy. I lived 49 years not knowing what it meant to really be happy. Oh, I had happy times, happy moments, happy seasons of life, but my happy was contingent on the world around, who I was with and on my circumstances. I found my happy recently and now my happy is changing the world around me.
I can have an overly hectic day, a down day, a kind of wishing today was over day, but I am still happy. My happy is no longer based on what goes on around me; it is based on what goes on within me. I make a choice, daily, to be happy because I want to be, I deserve to be and I desire to be. I am a better person happy and those around me are better because I am happy. Sure I have those days where I may feel melancholy but it is just that, a day that will pass on into tomorrow and my happy doesn’t change because of it. ~The power of Choice~
Having an attitude of gratefulness really keeps my happy in check. I have so many things that I am grateful for daily, hourly, minute by minute. I gain strength from being grateful. I am propelled forward by being grateful. My life energy is recharged by being grateful. I could fill a book with the things I am grateful for. It wasn’t too long ago that I had trouble coming up with two or three things to be grateful for. Today I am grateful for God’s amazing grace and mercy, healing, forgiveness and change in my life, new friends, old friends, family, the sunshine, raw food, my job, my future and oh, so much more.
Day 1: Write down one thing you are grateful for. Keep a journal, a running log, a post it note on your I phone, or a scratch pad on your night stand. Don’t go to bed tonight without writing down something you are grateful for.
“To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.”
~Johannes A. Gaertner~
~Grateful for Life~
Denise
