Yesterday was, in my country of adoption, a day for Thanksgiving for all that we have in our lives. Today is, apparently for many, a day for buying more stuff because, it seems, we do not have enough. There’s an irony there that I am not the first to see.
What if, for most of us, we do already have enough?
What if we don’t need more than we have? I am talking about those of us who are “first world” people. I am thinking about what most of the people who can read this have, as opposed to refugees who have given up everything – yes, everything that they cannot carry in their own two arms, walking on their own two feet, to get to some place of respite. I am not talking about homeless folk who carry what they own in plastic bags, or push it in “borrowed” grocery carts. (Although actually, there are some of these who are content with what they have and choose that rather than accommodating themselves to rules and regulations that many of us consider to be “normal behavior.”)
To each his/her own.
My point is that most of us have. We have to overflowing. And yet we want more.
In my coaching, I find that much unhappiness focuses on what one does not have, or what one has that one does not want. My first assignment to some new clients is often so simple as to be ridiculous, yet so life changing that some people will not take it on. It is simply to start a gratitude journal – naming, at the end of the day, five things for which one has been grateful at some point during that day. The trick is that it cannot be the same thing repeated. That is why it needs to be a journal, recorded, so that the writer can look back, and avoid repeating anything that was written in the previous seven days.
I remember a client from some years back who, one week after I had asked her to take on this assignment, positively bubbled at the start of our next phone call.
“When I leave for work, even as I’m driving, I remember to look for things to put in my journal. I see so much more that is lovely, or fun. I am thinking about finding good things all day – I did not know there was so much to enjoy in my life.”
I think of another client who had lost a dearly loved relative. Concerned that she might spiral into depression, I made an exception to my usual three-time-a-month coaching call, and asked her to keep a gratitude journal and send it to me daily. It made such a difference in her life (and needing to send it stopped her from dropping it from her routine) that she has continued with her journal long after her grief, while not disappearing, has certainly weakened its hold on her.
Have you tried writing a gratitude journal? Try it. Let it become a habit. Buy yourself a nice looking bound blank-page book, or use an old spiral-bound writing pad. It does not matter what it looks like so long as it is what you choose. Through the course of your day, focus on finding those five things that you find good, beautiful, or that make you happy so that you can write them down as you look back over your day. Then, when the bad days come – and they almost certainly will – you have it to look back on, to remind you that, indeed, life can be good, and if yours was good before, it can most certainly be good again.
Bonus: You will probably find that the majority of the things that you write down do NOT come into the category of “stuff.”
Try it – five things each day – from now until the end of next year – however you count your days and your years. It just may change your life.
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