Today I’m thinking about my practice of gratitude and how’s it’s positively impacting my life

Today is Sunday, 11/15/20, and the governor will announce another wave of shutdowns due to COVID-19. Sadly, Thanksgiving is next week, and families will be forced to distance during another holiday.

While I feel a sense of disappointment, I can’t do much about the situation. So I must reach in and feel gratitude for the lessons I have learned this year.

At the surface, we can narrowly think how impossibly hard and horrible this year has been. Especially if we focus on what we have lost, and no doubt, there has been much loss. But as Tony Robbins says, “Focus goes where energy flows.”

“Focus goes where energy flows,” – Tony Robbins

If we focus on the bad, all we see is the bad. I’m choosing to focus on the good that has and continues to happen for me this year.

A few things I’m grateful for include:

• Solving and managing challenges our family faced this year, including not having a permanent home during the pandemic

• Being able to spend a few months with my mom after my stepdad’s passing

• Homeschooling my kiddos

• Visiting zoos, museums, and other historical attractions this year without lines or traffic

• Technology has allowed us to stay connected while we travel, quarantine, or distance

• Making new friends on the road and quarantining with them for the first six weeks of the pandemic

• Time to focus on diet and exercise in order to stay healthy while traveling during a pandemic

This is not downplaying that people have died or lost their jobs or have endured other significant hardships. I pray for people daily, and it is not lost on me.

However, we must all focus on the good in our lives, our country, and the world. There is good all around if we choose to see it- we must choose to see that right now.

Gratitude Challenge

I challenge you to start a gratitude journal with your family. This is the gratitude journal my kids use, and this is the gratitude journal I use. We sit down about five days a week, usually before our school day begins, for gratitude.

I don’t make our gratitude practice complicated, and I don’t have any expectations about what my kids should write. We just sit down and enjoy thinking about the good that has happened for us. I promise if you make this a practice during your week, even if just once per week, your perspective will start to change, and you’ll begin to feel grateful for even the littlest of things.

Do you practice gratitude? What are some things you are grateful for?

If you enjoyed this post, check out yesterday’s Daily Diary post about trust.