I’d shared at the beginning of this month that my word for 2014 is;

Gratitude

I’ve been mindful and each day I reflect and try to find something that I am grateful for. There are days where I have to sit down and really ponder, other days I find things I am grateful for on an hourly basis without even really looking.

Some days I write them down and some days I don’t. Some days I’m grateful for significant things like being blessed with children and other days I’m grateful for “fluff” like coffee ..

I guess I hadn’t really thought through the logistics of “how I would live 2014 in Gratitude”

I had seen Gratitude Journals online when I was working through my options of this years word, but those things are expensive and I wanted to do gratitude on a shoestring, so I made my own ..

One stock standard diary and some stickers is basically all it took. Then each day I select a quote from the hundreds you can find online that seems to be the “right fit” for my mood that day and I write it at the top of the page.

The only downfall with my gratitude on a budget idea was that “real” gratitude journals tend to have activities (or prompts) that center your thoughts and although this Kikki K gratitude journal looks AMAZING it’s a tad outside my budget.

So before my #365days of gratitude list contained 200 entries of how I am truly grateful for coffee I thought I should broaden my horizons and see how other people live a grateful life.

I waded through a myriad of blogs and came away with some great ideas. I especially like the blogs that are aimed at kids, because the ideas are simple and easy to implement. I especially enjoyed this article on how to teach gratitude and next week I’m going to allocate one day to each of my family members and work through point six.

More importantly I’ve come to realise that the things you are grateful for don’t always have to be the big stuff (like family, health, work stability). Today for example I am grateful that;

1. My knees didn’t collapse when I did heavy squats with Joe this morning
2. This mornings wod contained no running and;
3. There was no queue at the coffee shop.

Some days it’s the simple things that bring the most joy.

Till next time