Have you been doing your daily 'What I'm Thankful For' this month? If you have, you're ahead of this exercise! If you haven't, no worries. You can start today! You may want to get some scratch paper to jot your list down on. Be sure it's big enough for everything or have a couple of sheets available. You'll be listing 30 different 'things' you're grateful for. (There's 30 days in November.) Try to get a variety of things that you're grateful for in your life. You're going to want to cover: Mental, Emotional, Physical (your body), Spiritual, Material (things), and Financial (money stuff) for yourself and then, of course, all the people and animals in your life... You could add Social, Recreational, Your Work and/or School and anything else you can think of. You could even start a separate list of categories of things you're going to write about being thankful for. (The organizing is completely up to you, these are just ideas. think 'balanced' when you're doing this and you should be able to cover all aspects and areas of your life pretty easily.) Contemplate what you're writing down. This isn't meant to be done in five minutes. This is a contemplative exercise that you're going to want to put some time and effort into. (Hence the scratch paper, you'll be making a Gratitude Journal and there's a link for free Gratitude Journal pages for you to print out.) After you have the wording that you want, transcribe your list into your Gratitude Journal. Be sure to date it!
Take your time with this. Remember, this is usually an exercise that you do for the entire month! Enjoy this exercise. You're looking over and reviewing your life. That in itself is something you could put down... That you have the time, the space, the will and the ability to do this exercise.
This year send out Gratitude cards! You can use them with or instead of Holiday Cards or/and add a 'Thank You' and/or a 'Why I appreciate You' in your cards that you send out this year. You can also add it to your emails and/or gifts.
Being grateful is a wonderful habit to get into! You'll be surprised how compliments and feelings of appreciation begin to to pour out of you once you begin to focus on everything you love in your life. you'll naturally become more positive and secure; those are some of the side effects of focusing on what you already have instead of what you want. And, what a fabulous way to start... telling everyone in your life how much you appreciate them! Holiday cards are a great way to communicate your adoration; you're sending them out anyway! If you're not doing cards or gifts... You can always call them! If you're not used to expressing yourself in this way, make a little list or notes to yourself before you talk to them. If you're uncomfortable, rehearse it. You can practice in your mind, with another person or by looking in the mirror or saying it out loud. Oh, and smile when you're doing it. Really. Practice talking with a smile. It will make a difference! If you're a social media person, find pictures, quotes (or think up your own!) that talk about gratitude and how thankful you are. You may be surprised by how many people respond to your positive postings, tweets, statuses and pins! Spread the Joy!
Make a Thank You Journal with a Gratitude Collage Cover! How fun! There's so many ways that you could do this.
The Inside:You can decorate a notebook, get a journal and decorate the cover, you can make the cover and print the pages from the Free Gratitude Journal for Kids and insert them into a three ring binder or go to a store and have the book bound for you. (If you use the print outs, there are two different sizes of printed paper, download the examples to see which will fit the journal you're making for yourself the best. Click here to get the journal pages now.)
You have so many options. Pick one that fits you and you like... Be sure it's something that you are going to like using and writing in regularly. Be conscious of the size, shape and binding. you want to make this as convenient for yourself as possible.
The Cover~you can draw, paint or write on it. You can decorate it anyway that you like. You can cut out pictures and glue or tape them on. You can seal it with glue, laminate it, use spray so that it doesn't smear. It's completely up to you how you'd like to protect it. Practice first. If it's pictures you're using, line them up before you stick them on permanently. If you're drawing or painting, do some rough drafts. And there's everything you can do on the computer! You could even make a collage online and print it out.
This is a gratitude collage. It's things, people and moments that you have or have already had. This isn't a create what you want exercise, it's an I appreciate my life, as it is, right now exercise.
The Substance: Here's the content section. You may want to set some goals about how often you're going to use your journal; the only thing you really should do is date the entries, other than that, it's anything thing goes and anyway you want to do it! This is your journal about what you appreciate in your life. The entries should reflect what you are grateful for. (Try to keep everyone else's voices out of your head while you're journaling, writing and crafting. Tune into you and where and why you feel grateful, blessed, loved, that deep sense of appreciation.) Need ideas about your entries? You can add your exercise of A Month of Gratitude. you can write about wonderful moments in time that you are thankful for. You can put in your accomplishments and challenges you have overcome. You can write about how lovely the weather is and how blessed you are to be alive. You can even meditate on gratitude and write about your experiences. you may find that each and every meditation is different!
What Now? You enjoy it! And, you did it! Congratulations! That's it. It's that simple and easy! You can vary this anyway you like. You could turn this into a family project night, do it with your partner or by yourself. You can change it up, fill it up and make a new one in a week or next year. If you set the same time each day or each week to write in your journal you'll find that contemplating and focusing on what you appreciate in your life will quickly become a habit; you're welcoming in and training yourself to have an attitude of gratitude.
Gratitude isn't just about accepting, receiving or acknowledging and appreciating what you have, it's also about Giving. When you are centered in deep appreciation for yourself, your life and those around you, it opens you to have the inner space to be able to give back, contribute to society and help those around you. What's your contribution to the world? How can you be of service? How can you spread more love and joy? This would be a great meditation and a good journal entry, even if you made a list of ideas or goals that you'd like to do. How could you spread this feeling (gratitude) to others?
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| Free Gratitude Journals for the Whole Family to Enjoy! |
Free (downloadable) Gratitude Journals! These are great for the whole family! You can print the entire journal or just the pages that you'd like to use for the sitting/exercise. There's two different journals to choose from ~ download the example pages to decide which journal will fit your exercise the best. The lay outs are the same but the numbers of lines on the pages are different in each journal. Each journal comes with 5 sets of one picture page and two lined pages. Click here to see them now.
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