Day Twenty Eight | 31 Days of Thanksgiving
Routine
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. – Cicero
When you stop to reflect on the blessings you have, it makes the things you want seem to fade. Discontent is an easy thing to make routine. The marketing, the advertising and just flat out desire, all prod us into wanting more and being discontent with what we have. In fact, if we do nothing, discontent is our “base” condition.
There are very few things in our daily routine that force us to be grateful.
Why is it only from about Thanksgiving to New Years that we actually spend time, as a society, reflecting on family, friends and gratitude for the year past? Granted, that’s a rhetorical question; I understand it’s the end of the year and natural to reflect on the old and prepare for the new.
But why can’t this be done throughout the year? Why don’t we recognize the blessings all around us daily? Why is it so difficult to be content? I would argue that it is difficult because it takes effort. Just like anything else of value in our life, we need to work at, put effort into, making gratitude a routine.
Part of my routine to recognize everyday blessings I should be grateful for, is writing. Not necessarily on a blog, facebook or twitter, either. I began keeping a journal some time ago, and recently, moved the journaling on to my laptop.
The purpose of my journal is not to simply document what has happened in my life or to reflect, narcissistically, on what my thoughts were on a given day. The purpose of my journal is to give me the time to gather my thoughts and impressions on a day. Once those thoughts are gathered, I will pray over them and thank God for His blessings.
This routine of slowing down, reflecting on the day ahead of me or recently completed, banging on the keyboard and then praying over these blessings has allowed me to recognize just how fortunate and blessed a life I live.
What routine do you have in learning to be grateful?
FYI – Recently, I bumped into a great program for my Mac (sorry PC users) called OmmWriter. While every computer has some kind of rudimentary text editor already loaded into it, OmmWriter intentionally focuses you on the page you are writing. In addition to a clean interface, it also allows you to choose from a few different musical pieces.
[Here's the link to all of the 31 Days of Thanksgiving posts.]
[photo credit]
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