Meditation: Calm, 7 Days of Gratitude: Sharpening our Attention Length: 12 minutes Where: Office/Guest Room, Los Angeles How It Felt: Joyful
I did it! I finished the 7 Days of Gratitude series. I’m so glad I saved the last one for today, when I was feeling happier and more energetic. It felt so good!
I even got this cool little badge:
Today, as I wrote earlier, is also Steve’s 50th birthday, and I’m just feeling all around grateful. For him, for his health, for our marriage, for all the love of our family and friends, and for life coming back again so I can celebrate all of those things with a huge, crazy party.
This session was about all the things we tend not to notice (and therefore not to appreciate) until they are gone. She used the example of our health, which is something I’m sure we’ve all experienced. You feel good and healthy day after day, but you don’t notice until you get sick. Then you think, “when I finally feel better, I’m going to really appreciate it! I’m going to live life! I can’t wait!”
And that lasts about one day after you get healthy, and then you forget to appreciate feeling good again.
It’s just crazy. Crazy how much we have to be grateful for. It honestly overwhelms me sometimes. Just sitting here at my little desk tucked away in a nook in my bedroom, I could look around and see or think of a hundred things to be grateful for without even pausing. In the meditation today, she brought up pens. Pens. How often do you think to stop and be grateful for a pen? But people elsewhere don’t have them. People in the past didn’t even know an easier way to write existed. Some people don’t know how to write, or don’t have hands, or are blind, and can’t use a pen.
Just the word “pen” brings up a long list of things that should be appreciated.
I love this so much. I love being grateful, I love how it makes me feel. It humbles me, and reminds me of all I have. It makes me happy and joyful. It makes me feel kinder, more empathetic, and moved to give back. It makes me more helpful and less negative, more generous and less selfish.
Gratitude makes me feel like I’m glowing from within, and I know it affects my energy out in the world. It makes that energy more positive and powerful, more uplifting and supportive.
It just makes me a better person.
Is there a single negative thing about finding real gratitude? I don’t believe there is.
My Year of Meditation 