By Tracey Locke
Some people say grace before meals. My mom used to wear a bead bracelet designed to move the beads each day as you count your blessings. At the beginning of this year, we tried having our children write down what they were grateful for each night before bed. The intention was to make a tree out of a year’s worth of little gratitude notes as our Thanksgiving center piece. Each night, each family member put their note or leaf in a chest along with a one dollar coin. As a family, we planned on picking a charity to share the treasure with for the holidays. I’ve seen the same concept done with a jar. Instead of hanging the papers on branches, guests pass the jar and read the notes out loud during the turkey day feast.
Somehow, our busy, unpredictable schedules got the better of us and our treasure chest went untouched. A few days missed during a vacation turned into weeks without a word of thanks. We tried again. But a few late nights rushing around to get everyone tucked in to bed turned into months of neglect. Why is something so simple and so life changing so easy to forget? Before I could teach my children the importance of being grateful, I had to develop the habit for myself.
I read Deborah Norville’s Thank You Power: Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You. Norville shared story after story where gratitude created opportunities beyond imagination. She reinforced what everyone intuitively already knows to be true.
Focus on what you don’t have and you live in scarcity. Focus on what you do have and you attract abundance.
The former Today Show host takes note of the small things like the beauty in a sunrise or the kindness of a stranger who lets her cut through traffic. Norville also keeps a notebook in her purse and then rereads her little grateful reminders when she is feeling stressed. If she wrote the book today, she might recommend an app for your phone to journal.
My take away from this book was to start a gratitude blog. I called my blog 50,000 Thoughts because a study by the National Science Foundation found that the average person has 50,000 thoughts per day and the vast majority of those thoughts are the same ones you had the day before. The idea is to add some new grateful thoughts to my recurring playlist. After a few months of struggling to write a blog post once a week, I came to a realization. For me, the opposite of living in gratitude is living in guilt. I was filled with it. My guilt stemmed from constantly feeling I didn’t have enough time or I was not using my time wisely. I was living in scarcity. I was the mom who physically was at my son’s football game but mentally on to the next task. No wonder our sweet little gratitude tree withered.
How can you be grateful for something when you’re not there in the moment to enjoy it?
Things needed to change. I read another gem of a book called The Art of Extreme Self Care by Cheryl Richardson. Richardson gave me the idea to come up with an absolute no list. The list forces you to identify things not worth spending time on anymore. Richardson’s list included things like: supporting businesses that don’t share her values or engaging in other people’s conflicts if she couldn’t take action and help. My list included things like: making choices out of obligation and giving unsolicited advice. Her other helpful idea was identifying priorities. That meant shifting from a daily to-do list mindset to creating a schedule that allotted time for things that made me happy, like exercise and writing.
This fall, instead of losing leaves, our gratitude tree is springing to life again and filling in nicely.
I am teaching my children to say thanks, but they have since taught me to feel thankful. By being more present, I am witnessing the splendor of their childhood. You can see my 12-year- old son’s sincere appreciation for nature when he spots an unusual fish or insect. You can hear the genuine enthusiasm in my 4-year-old daughter’s voice when she declares, “This is the best day ever” while flying a kite. They didn’t need to read a book to be reminded of life’s simple pleasures. No prioritizing schedules or developing habits or journaling are necessary for them to live in the moment.
Our crafty tree of thanks appeared to stop growing for a while, but it was really propagating enough acorns to fill a forest. A seed of gratitude sprouted into the rediscovery of my passion and purpose, writing. Another seed found some sunlight in my children’s smiles. It is growing into a year-long personal development experiment called Be More Childlike. I am blogging my way to a book about consciously trying to be all the things that come naturally to my children. Optimistic. Aware. Enthusiastic. Intuitive. Each month, there is a different focus. November’s focus is childlike gratitude, back to the roots of where this whole new life of abundance first started.
Tracey Locke spent 13 years working as a television reporter and three years as a publicist. These days she writes about what inspires her, her children. For more on how one ordinary woman is trying to live an extraordinary life, visit http://bemorechildlike.blogspot.com.