Daily Gratitude: I don’t think I would have realized the immense value of this concept until this past week. On Friday I got some not so great news and as we so often do, I spent too much time thinking about it (but I’m proud to say not nearly as much time as I would have in the past) until I was journaling about all the cool things that had happened during the week. All of a sudden it was as if I was hit over the head and realized two things: 1) I liked the feeling I got when I thought about those things a whole lot more than the feeling I had when I thought about the not so good news; and 2) It was stupid of me to essentially invalidate all the wonderful things that happened during the week. So I started listing all the good things and sort of reliving each one as i wrote about it. Amazingly (but not really amazingly) I started to feel fantastic and guess what – not thinking about that other thing so much. The other benefit of this realization is that I had been “trying” to develop the habit of having a pm journal, too, but just couldn’t get into it. There was nothing that got me into buying into it. But now I see a definite purpose for what i am going to journal about. And that’s a daily inventory. If I write the good things (even if all I have time for is a bullet list), then when I’m down or something else doesn’t go great, I can leaf back through those pages (yes I still write things out) and read them to make me realize how blessed I am. This will recreate those good feelings and help negate anything else that might be rolling around this head of mine. Writing them down every day insures I wont forget them because during times when you’re not on the top of a mountain, your memory might not be that helpful. But your journal will be. Try this for a while and see what you think. I know I am excited!