How I started my gratitude journey

My amazing friend recently asked me:

Hey dear… I love to see you being so grateful at every aspects of life. 

Can u guide me to do so and to become so much grateful. 

How to start the "being grateful journey and motivation"?

I have written about how I started my gratitude journaling here, which started back in Oct 2020.

How it all started: https://swarmingforselflove.blogspot.com/2022/06/gratitude-journaling.html

Initially, I started my gratitude journaling sporadically. Seeing gratitude post-it notes around me became a reminder for me to do more of it. I started to pay attention to how I felt after I wrote gratitude notes and realized it felt really good and it was calming too. Eventually, overtime, as I read more and practiced more gratitude, it started to become an integral and very big part of my life. Today, gratitude journaling is still part of my life in a slightly different way. I still do write the fill-in-the-blank: “Today I am grateful for…” as an activity but more than that it has become a sacred ritual that I have incorporated in everything I do during my entire day.

First two gratitude books that I read are these. I have read them over and over again because the chapters or verses are small and could be read daily. Do check these out.

(1)

Attitudes of Gratitude: How to Give and Receive Joy Every Day of Your Life (Practicing Gratitude) Paperback – October 1, 2017 by M.J. Ryan (Author), Mark Nepo (Foreword)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573247103/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(2)

A Grateful Heart: Daily Blessings for the Evening Meals from Buddha to The Beatles (Prayers, Poems, Gratitude, Affirmations,Thanks) Paperback – October 1, 2011 by M.J. Ryan (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573245372/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Another great book that I read was this one that my cousin recommended. It changed the way I thought of everything in my life. I started to think about so-called negative, unpleasant things as teachings and started to look for what lesson they were teaching me after I read this one. Highly recommend for those wanting to make big shifts in the way their life works right now. It has truly been a game-changer one for me!

(3)

Attitude Is Everything: Change Your Attitude... Change Your Life! Paperback – March 13, 2012 by Jeff Keller (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Attitude-Everything-Change-Your-Life/dp/0979041031/ref=sr_1_1?crid=VWN49AJIVP6R&keywords=attitude+is+everything&qid=1707871080&sprefix=attitude+is+%2Caps%2C166&sr=8-1

There are a few other things that have helped me improve my gratitude practice and gratitude journaling. Some of them include forgiveness, compassion, loving kindness, mindfulness, and self-love. Forgiveness for self and others, compassion for self and others, loving kindness for self and others... everything applies to ourselves first and then others. Practicing all of these have made me feel more grateful. I will share more on all of these later.

Love & Light,

Kanan 

Gratitude Journaling

Originally posted on 25-Jun-2021:

Still feeling quite obsessed about pink flowers and all things pink, so obviously I went searching for more hot pinks in my photo album and that brought me to these photos and I’m so happy to be spreading this positivity and my gratitude with you all!

Photo #1 from June 2021

Photo #2 from May 2021

Photo #3 from November 2020

09-Oct-2020: This is the night that changed my life forever for better. All my many thanks to my big sister, my cousin Darshana, for spending several hours video chatting with me that night. At that point, 2020 had been the toughest year of my life and she just knew it, she could feel it, she was the only one that could feel it sitting about 8700 miles away from me, exactly how I felt. There were other loved ones close by who knew what I was feeling and going through, but no one so far away in distance as her. We spent over three hours video chatting with each other till our eyes turned red from staring into our tiny phones and crying together, sharing our experiences, our thoughts, our feelings, she listening to me, not giving me any advice or recommendations but just listening, sharing wonderful and courageous stories of her own life and close to the end of our video chat, making five tiny suggestions on how to help myself, if I was OK with it and open for it. Had I said no to that offer, she’d have gladly just smiled and waited for another time to share those with me and I know that in my heart. That’s what I love about her. She just knows what to do and when. Little did I realize at that point that three of her suggestions would change my life forever, for the better! She showed me a path to healing, of self-help that would eventually lead me to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. She was the doobte-ko-tinke-ka-sahara for me. One of these suggestions was to start writing a gratitude journal. Preferably daily. She didn’t just say go do journaling. She actually told me exactly what to do. She knew it in her heart I needed to start with baby steps. She suggested to start with a one-liner gratitude note per day and reminded me that it was completely OK (she repeated that several times until it sunk into me) if some days I didn’t have anything I could think of to be grateful for. She knew I was overwhelmed beyond imagination. I had hit the rock bottom. I loved her idea and wanted to implement it, but a notebook page, that 8.5”X11” just seemed several miles long, just too big to write anything on it. My mind was just blank because it was so overloaded, overwhelmed and confused. I couldn’t think of anything to write. I was just so lost. So I looked around and saw a stack of post-it notes near by - thanks to Work from home I had pens and post-it notes sitting close by to me. To encourage myself to write as minimal as possible, I picked up the tiniest of the post-it note I could find and decided to write my first gratitude note on 10-Oct-2020. In her suggestion about the gratitude journaling, she was very specific. Her suggestion was, just fill in the blank: Today I am grateful for __________. It can be one word or a line or anything you / I want it to be. Slowly, I started doing it almost daily and every time I did that, it felt good. I’d have a tiny smile on my face while I wrote the notes. Some days I couldn’t think of anything and didn’t write any post-its. Other days, I would continue to look around for one thing that I will eventually write on the post-it note before bedtime. Days passed and writing gratitude notes was getting more and more fun and easier. Gradually, I started to see and realize about just how many and enormous amounts of things and people around me I was grateful for. It’s been over eight months now and I can easily claim that #1 self-help thing that has helped me on my healing journey is writing these gratitude notes. Darshanaben, I am so eternally grateful for you and to you for bringing gratitude and in turn hope back to my life, for teaching me how to see what all there is so I don’t take things for granted, for lifting me up when I needed the most, and for showing me how to help myself so that I can start living my best life possible! I love you so much!

PS. I continue to write my gratitude journal daily and feel the gratitude every moment that I remember it and remember, thank and bless my Darshana!

#gratitude #love #life #blessed #sisterlove #postitnotes #writing #pink #writinginspiration