About two months ago I discovered a blog of an American singer/song-maker named Christine Kane (www.christinekane.com/blog). I think what made me found her was that we're both somehow spiritual pathfinder and like attracts like. As a senior in this soul-searching business, she has collected many experiences and afterward wrote them in her online diary to help improving people's (spiritual) lives. She also wrote many good advices, one of which I started to do after I read the explanation.
This one piece of advice is to start a gratitude journal. This is basically a book that you write at the end of each day where you thank God (or the Universe or whatever) for the blessings you received that day. You can start with writing one thing you're grateful for each day (or maybe stay with one if you're not an advent writer such as I) and then add to five or maybe even 10. I myself started with 5 and am now doing 7. There is however one rule, i.e. you must write different thing(s) every single day.
The best thing about this book is that it really makes me a better person by (1) making me go through a day in full-conciousness (exactly what Christine's experiencing) because I have to collect materials for my book; (2) making me do a review of my entire day and thus made me more analytical; (3) making me complain less (though hopefully someday I will stop eventully!) and accept more because at the end of each day, after thanking God even for the smallest detail of life which usually goes unnoticed (like 'having a pair of eyes that is capable of blinking'), I realized that despite all the troubles and miseries I've gone through my waking hours, there are still millions of things to be thankful for so there really is no reason to whine; (4) making me more appreciative of what people around me do or say thus making me more positive because I concentrate on the good side of everything; (5) making me feel closer to God and realize that I am seriously being taken care of; (6) making me more at ease with myself and the people I live with and see on daily basis; (7) making me take myself (far!) less seriously because even when nobody's perfect the world's still turning and life's still good and kind; (8) making me more at peace with myself and my surrounding; and (9) pulling good things to my life.
Seriously, being a grateful has strangely improved my material life. I don't know how this happened but I sensed that ever since I started to write "Dear God, thank you so much today for ...." and started to put numbers below this sentence, everything I needed came slowly but surely in hand. Eckhart Tolle once explained that what happened actually was that by being grateful we changed our behavior from that of "wanting" to that of "having" and effectively waking our mind to things we already possesed.
Anyway, I am really happy that I do this every night now. Through the ups and downs of everyday life, we often forget how lucky we are just to be able to walk, to talk (even the ugly form of it), to breathe, to shed a tear, to feel, or simply: to be alive.
(Imported old blog, originally written on September 22, 2008)
