October 14, 2020
A “Gratitude” Journal
As our “Year of Living Mindfully” program came to a close this past weekend – in a sweet-connected & compassionate virtual lovefest – we were reminded by our teacher, Jonathan Foust, about the power of a gratitude journal. I’ve already blogged about the power of gratitude as a way to help change your way of thinking, your attitude. By focusing on neural pathways that give you pleasure rather than reinforce those that bring you pain & anxiety, you can retrain yourself physiologically.
There’s a lot of resources about the science of all this – and I’m sure I’ll get around to blogging about the books that bear this out because when you read them, they read true – but for now, I’ll just highlight the simple suggestion that you keep a “gratitude” journal if you’re looking to feel better about things. All you do is write something each day that you feel grateful for. If you’re really down and struggling to come up with something, Jonathan recommended that you just list parts of your body that don’t hurt (eg. a finger, a toe) – so that you start somewhere…