We've talked before about Brisbane-based photographer and mother-of-two Hailey Bartholomew, who created a personal photographic project called 365 Days of Grateful – one polaroid of something for which she was grateful, every day, for a year.
Having a gratitude practice fits beautifully within step 5 of living savvy – celebrate. It's so important to acknowledge and celebrate our efforts and achievements, what's good in our lives and what's already working for us. In fact, that's why we have Champagne Friday every week here on the website.
Gratitude, reflection, acknowledgement, celebration – these are all ways to simply pause and notice the positive.
We find it so much easier to focus on what's missing, and how we haven't done 'enough'. That's something the women of Living Savvy online TV talk about in this video.
But as photographer Hailey said:
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.
And the more we practice noticing the positive, the more positives we notice!
With my weekly Champagne Friday practice, I've seen that as I consciously acknowledge and celebrate the great things happening each week, it heightens my awareness of what is going well the following week. Noticing the positive is a recipe for inviting happiness into your life every day!
How to start your own happiness practice…
The key elements are:
- Create a record of some kind, preferably something you are likely to see regularly, whether it's online or on your wall or in a special book (see below for ideas).
- Choose a regular time each day for your practice – this helps form a habit. Perhaps it's during your lunch break, before your start dinner or right before you go to bed.
- Choose a measurable goal for your practice – I will record 1 thing I'm grateful for every day, or 3 things or 5 things. Set the bar and your mind will go to work to find those positives in your life!
- If possible, include a 'because' in your grateful record… such as “I'm grateful for the spring sun because it kept me warm” or “I'm grateful for my health because it meant I could run through the park today”.
- Above all else, make it simple. Don't make it a big production. That means that the grateful items themselves can be very small and simple (“I'm grateful for the flowers on my desk because they make my office smell lovely”), and also that however you choose to record them should be absolutely easy and fun for you…
Choose what's fun and easy for you!
Take a daily photograph
- Use your mobile phone (because it's always with you). iPhone owners can use fun Polaroid apps like ShakeItPhoto or Hipstamatic.
- Email or upload them to a free blog site like these 365 days of grateful projects at Posterous and blogger or to your free flickr account.
- If you have a colour printer, print them and put them up on a display board in your home or office.
- Add them to your screensaver folder so they pop up whenever your computer monitor goes to sleep.
Write your gratitude
- Again, use free blog site like Posterous.
- Get a journal and use one page per day – write your gratitude in big, bold letters in the middle of the page. Add to your words with small items you can glue to the page (a small flower, a ticket to a show).
- Write on an index card every day and add it to a pin board in your home or office.
- Tweet it (and challenge yourself to do it within 140 characters!) with the hashtag #grateful
Consider sharing the practice with your friends and family
I love the idea of doing this with your kids each afternoon – even just taking 5 mins to put something down together in your scrapbook or on your pinboard. Or getting together with the girls for a gratitude party. Or recounting your good stuff for the day with a partner each evening over a glass of wine. That way you'll not only be happier yourself, you'll share the happiness with those you love.
Image by kennymatic
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