Gratitude

For my 13th birthday party, a friend gave me a composition notebook that said "Gratitude Journal" on the front. Inside was this message:

"This is my gratitude journal. It is a place where I record the simple details of my life. Because I am alive, I am grateful for many things, however on the grimmest of days and during the most unfortunate of circumstances, I struggle to reflect or portray a high degree of gratitude. In contrast, I know that during these low times I am grateful for something. Without a doubt, even when I am at the bottom, there are at least five things I can be grateful for. Therefore, each day, no matter how good or bad, I'm confident as a minimum I am grateful for at least five things."

It also had instructions to write down five things I was grateful for each night. If I missed a night, there was no making it up. "Go forward and focus on what you are grateful for today rather than a memory of days gone by." And I did. For nearly six years, from May of 2004 to March of 2010, I wrote down five things every night, rarely missing a night and filling four notebooks. But in March of 2010, I suddenly stopped. 

Recently I was discussing this with Andy, my best friend who is serving his LDS mission in Virginia. It came up because in the LDS General Conference last week, President Uchtdorf gave a talk about gratitude, and Andy mentioned that he was working on that in particular. I remembered my gratitude journal, and said I thought I might start it up again. He replied, "Do it!" So here this is.

With this blog I'll use a slightly different format than the physical journals I kept. The old journals have just a list of five things for each day, with maybe one line of scrawled explanation. Sometimes when I go back and read them, I think "But why was I grateful for that?" So instead, I'll choose one thing each day (or as often as I remember) and write a description of why I am grateful for that particular thing.

Today, I am grateful for gratitude, and the chance to express it. Hopefully this blog will help me focus on the positive things in life, and help me get through the stresses of every day life.