pantsfarm

I was talking to one of my roommates earlier this week and she was saying how she had such a terrible day or something. I don’t remember the exact details however at the time I thought she was maybe complaining a lot and somehow I ended up making the statement “but you have so much to be grateful for!”

After that, the tone of the conversation shifted a bit as I tried to explain what I meant, and I remembered how a while ago, in some book I was reading, I read about the idea of a gratitude journal. The basic idea is every day, you write down three or five or however many things (pretty much totally arbitrary) that you are grateful for. This could be something like “nice weather today” or it could be “the test came back clean!” or whatever. Big or small, it doesn’t matter, it’s just to get into the habit of thinking about and writing down the good things that are going on.

The search results linked above do give me the impression that the entire idea has taken much stronger root among a more new-agey crowd with whom I do not really identify so well. However, back when I first moved to China, I did keep one for a while (checking the dates, it appears to be from November 06 through the middle of January 07). I can’t say for sure if it did have a profound effect on my sense of well being but I do think it was a positive exercise.

I think the main thing about the idea that resonates for me is the notion that I don’t usually stop to notice when things go well, only when they are going crappy. By stopping and actually identifying things that are good, it fosters this much stronger sense of awareness of the things that are not bad which in turns leads to a different, more positive, perspective on things.

Anyhow, at the end of the whole conversation and explaining this, I suggested she give it a try for a couple weeks, so when that’s done, I’ll ask her what she thought.