Gratitude

Last month we were lucky enough to travel to one of my favorite places with some of our favorite people.  Everything was perfect – the weather, the food, the ab workouts via laughing so hard… so when we deplaned to a rainy, cold night I was expecting to go into the post-vacation blues, but I felt something totally different.

Gratitude.

UHH BUHH!? A shocker to myself too, let me tell ya.

But it all started with a thoughtful Christmas gift from my girl LJ – the Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan.  The author starts the book on January 1st and talks about her year long adventure practicing gratitude, so I thought what an appropriate time to start my own journey.

I started the first night of the new year by grabbing the book, a pen and dove in, loving the mindset it put me in before falling asleep (reading before bed is a 2016 goal for me as well).

One of her first “homework assignments” is to keep a gratitude journal. A few years ago I did a post on keeping a Happiness Journal, which is basically the same thing… but I could never stick it out for any length of time.  I realized that after getting ready and getting into bed, I would then remember to journal, but would usually be to comfy (aka lazy) to get up and write… so I figured let’s bring this into the 21st century and do it in my notes section of my phone.  Considering most of use our phones as part of our nightly routine (setting alarms, stalking Instagram), it’s been much easier for me to remember to jot a sentence or two about what I’m most grateful for.  I plan on keeping a note for each month (which I will email to myself) and compile at the end of the year.

She focuses on all areas of our lives – relationships, career, health – and helps to really shine line on how important being grateful is for our mind, body and soul.  She’s super funny and entertaining, and having been the Editor in Chief for Parade magazine for numerous years, she has a ton of inside scoop celebrity stories thrown in there (that I obviously ate up).

If 300 pages of entertaining nonfiction can have me thinking “wow, I’m so thankful to have gone on an amazing trip and come back re-energized” as I get off a plane in 40 degree weather, I don’t know how you can’t spend the $15 and dive on in… unless you have a great friend to gift it to you… then for that I’d be pretty grateful 🙂