I was soaking up some great articles from the Notebook magazine website last year when I came across an article about Brisbane-based photographer and mother-of-two Hailey Bartholomew.
In 2008, she embarked on 365 Days of Grateful, a personal project for which every day for one year, she took a single Polaroid photograph of something she was grateful for. You can view the wonderful photographs from her first 365 Days of Grateful here. And you can read the original Notebook article via the PDF Hailey has posted on her blog here. And she also continued her practice of gratitude into 2009 and 2010 – together with a fellow 'blissed out mama' – here.
The good stuff in life can be surprisingly simple
Here at Living Savvy, we talk about how we can fine tune the ordinary to live extraordinary, but let's not forget how many truly exquisite, magical moments are to be found in the ordinary, just as it is. The literal capturing of just one moment in a Polaroid is a powerful expression of that idea – because looking at Hailey's images you can feel the depth of gratitude that emerges from those moments:
- running alongside while her daughter rides a bike
- freshly planted basil plants
- even a backyard full of yellow weeds!
In our community forum we've started a list of 101 ordinary things we can do to live extraordinary – check it out and add your suggestions.
We usually find what we're looking for
Hailey says:
I found that in the practice of doing it every day I started to catch things I would have otherwise walked straight past… It’s easy to spend our lives rushing from one thing to the next, but this allowed me to kind of press pause each day and savour those beautiful moments that would otherwise pass me by.
I've noticed the same effect with my weekly Champagne Friday practice. As I consciously acknowledge and celebrate the great things happening each week, it heightens my awareness of what is going well the following week. It's like, have you ever wanted a particular colour of shoes to match an outfit for a big event? Say you really want red shoes, and suddenly you're seeing them everywhere you never saw them before. Even on other people's feet!
Intentionally look for something, and you will find it. What are you paying attention to in your life? What would you like to start looking for?
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