28 Days Of Gratitude

Yoga Teacher Training is in the home stretch and we started reading “” by Rhonda Byrne. It is 28 days of practices designed to use gratitude to change your life. Like “Magic” it’s supposed to be life-changing!  We have all heard the benefits of positive thinking and making daily gratitude lists. I’ve tried it here and there, but stopped fairly quickly. For some reason, it’s way easier to continue to focus on what’s going wrong in one’s life and to keep doing what you’ve always done than to try a different approach. I want to change that. In order see the benefits of gratitude, you have to do it consistently and build up the habit.  If this were not part of Yoga Teacher Training, I can totally see me starting this and probably forgetting about it within a week ….or less. So, I’m glad this is homework, so I have a reason to keep going with it.  Ha!

The First day’s practice was to “Count Your Blessings”.  Basically, every day for the next 28 days, I have to write 10 things I’m grateful for, and why.  Then each day we have to read another section that tells us more things that we have to do daily on top of the 10 things and why. It looks to be a lot of stuff, but I’m going to take it one day at a time and try really hard to give this my all.

I’m sad to say, it was kinda hard to come up with 10 things already on just the first day, but once I got started, I think I did well.

So what am I grateful for today?

1.  My cat, Gingi. He is there for me when everyone else is busy…which seems to be every time I really need a friend.  He soothes and comforts me with his purrs, kitty kisses, and cuddles.  He loves me unconditionally as I do him.
2.  My Eyesight.  As a visual artist, my eye site is essential.  Photography and oil painting would be extremely hard to do with out it.  I spent over a year and a half with a guy that is legally blind.  I saw the daily challenges he faced and helped him with all of them during our time together. He does not drive, so I drove him everywhere. I would read menus, articles, food labels, and more to him daily. I learned how to guide him around, even in crowded venues.  He needed me and “my eyes” all the time. I am very grateful that I don’t have those challenges and need someone to get around and do normal activities, let alone lose my ability to do my art.
3.  Getting more work doing what I love.  Business has been picking up without me doing anything differently and I’m very grateful for it.
4.  The sun.  When I woke up this morning, I opened up the curtains to a beautiful bright sun and I appreciated it.
5.  My inner strength. I have been able to get by and do things on my own more often than many. I don’t have a “normal” job and I don’t keep “normal” hours, so I’m alone often. I, therefore, have to rely on myself for most everything and get through hardships alone and that has made me stronger.
6.  I’m grateful for my working body. I am able to express myself, not only through my visual art, but through movements of my body in dance. Nothing else feels as freeing as cranking up music and letting go in freestyle movement. Pure joy! Oh, and being able to do yoga too.
7.  For my yard birds. Every morning and throughout the day, I hear tons of tweets of various birds that live in the trees and bushes in my yard. I feed them left over food and bread that has gone stale and in return they hang around and sing happily every day. I really love it!
8.  My youthful appearance. I am told I look about 15 years younger than I really am all the time and I’m going to enjoy that as long as I possibly can.
9.  For a woman in my Yoga Teacher Training Class. As much as I love all the people in the training, she was the one out of 20 that reached out to me after class. I shared in class that I did not have the strongest support system and that’s why I’m so grateful for my cat. She text messaged me later that night that I could add her to my list of supportive friends if my cat isn’t “feeling conversational”. Ha! That was a sweet gesture and I really appreciated it.
10.  My parents. Without them letting my borrow the money for Yoga Teacher Training, another year would have passed without me doing it. I’ve been wanting to do this for about 6 years and every time I’d save money for it, something would come up that I needed to spend the money on more.

So, that was my first day of gratitude.  Whats on your list?

🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

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