I’ve always been inspired by gratitude. I guess that’s kind of self-explanatory: being grateful, gives you happy thoughts, giving you MORE happy thoughts, and the thoughts just keep on going on, the happiness you derive from being grateful inspiring you to keep being grateful.
A while back, there were a lot of people doing a gratitude challenge and posting it on social media. Something like, posting one thing they were grateful about, each day for 100 days. I had friends who started this, and interestingly, many found it difficult. In the presence of life’s many ups and downs, I saw many have to pull the brakes on the project, and call a hiatus as it were, to calm down, allow themselves to be temporarily ‘down,’ as they were experiencing it, and then recommence again.
They completed the project in the end, but not without their little intermission half-way through.
Now these, are positive, happy people.
I’ve always considered myself a positive person. I’m a self-confessed, glass half-full gal. However I didn’t feel I could commit to that particular project. Whether it was timing, not wanting to bare my all for everyone to view online, or whether I just wasn’t sure I could – or a combination of all 3 – I just stood back and thought.
And thought.
And thought.
And like the inquisitor I am, I asked myself a question:
‘Imagine a gratitude project… for all the days of your life?’
This was initially a very scary thought, and I won’t lie, it still is. Having experienced some very tough moments in the last few years, and knowing of life’s ups and downs, I was in fact terrified. What would I do, what would I say, what would I write, on those days, where I couldn’t even face the world? Where I wasn’t even sure, if I wanted to do anything, or speak, or write?
Or feel?
But then the Leo that I am, a challenge arose:
‘Imagine a gratitude project, for all the days of your life… where you need to find something new EVERY SINGLE DAY?’
It was a challenge, just waiting, in the back of my mind. I’m not sure what I was waiting for, but I think fear had much to do with it.
If I started this, this was IT. There was no going back.
Fast forward about a year.
Then, came my car crash. 5 days ago. The guy hit me: he hit my brand new car. The new car I’d been longing to drive for so long. I’d been driving in this new car, for 20 minutes when the crash occurred. This new car, I’d had an accident in not even half an hour after getting into it, whereas the old car I had been driving for the past 14 years, which was falling apart and needed much TLC, I had avoided crashing, and had been driven by Hubbie that very day. The guy didn’t hit Hubbie, who made the light minutes before I did. No, the guy hit my brand new car.
The car I’d been driving for only 20 MINUTES.
You get the picture.
And as Hubbie and I stood at the side of the road, swearing, pulling our hair out (literally), exclaiming “I can’t believe it!” after repeated, repeated, repeated repetition, one of us finally said “At least he only hit the door.”
That became a stronger thread as the day wore on, and the disappointment and sadness started to SLOWLY ease off.
“At least he hit the door.”
Thinking of how upset we had been, and how we were then justifying it and looking at the only positive that we could grasp, almost made me laugh. ALMOST.
I remembered that gratitude project challenge that I’d thought, all that time ago…
And the rest, as they say is history.
Now, I don’t have all the answers. I will not pretend that there are no dire circumstances in this world. Those matters terrify me the most, because I don’t know how I would deal in those situations.
This is just a blog, about my personal attempt at trying to find something good in every day. The challenge is for:
One gratitude item per day
No repetition of gratitude (need to find something new each day!)
Until forever.
Wish me luck. I have no idea how this will go. I nearly threw in the towel on day 4, so that’s a promising start already.
The following posts may inspire, help, or humour you. Let me know if anything else happens.
😉
carcrashgratitude 