We hope, long before the end of this new year of ‘doing the work’ with your journals, living in gratitude will become a way of life. For some of us, this state of grace is already our reality. For others of us, living in gratitude may be a sometimes-thing or it may be a relatively new concept. We will share with you what we, the 4WW, have done, and what has worked for us in the over-twenty years of doing this. Whether you write your gratitudes and follow up as we 4WW have been doing or do it your own way matters not one whit. The key is that you do it.
You read in an earlier blog that the 4WW have been using our journals to record our daily gratitudes and ah-ha's. And the magic starts as easily as that. We know you have full lives so we can tell you with certainty that details of past days can simply become one big jumble of things remembered and forgotten. Because it’s so very easy to forget the ordinary details of life’s moments, we have long adopted the practice of taking some time at the end of each day to record the highlights in our journals. In the final analysis these details give us our lives. Writing them down ensures they are not lost in the busy-ness of daily existing.
Some of you have asked what kinds of things to record and how much to write. The following are some possibilities: something that made you happy, or touched you, or you learned something new or learned a painful lesson, or you missed the bus and made a friend, or met up with a friend, or got your car fixed, or learned to play a new game or went to the theatre or saw a beautiful rainbow even though you were drenched in the rain. As we said in an earlier blog, we basically record our daily lives in our journals. Where in our journals - in the space allowed for each single day of the year. For me, the daily practice is like getting the tasty, yummy bits at the bottom of the pan- savouring the details of the memory. And there is no need for essays - bullet-points are fine. What if you forget to write for a day or more (as all the 4WW have done for sure!)? Simply use your day-timer/calendar to jog your memory and get right back to it.
So what do we do with all of this writing and this living consciously and with awareness? At the end of March, June, September (generally equinox and solstice) and mid-(ish)-December, we go through the previous three months and get to relive the moments of richness as we pick what for us, are our top 13 gratitudes. (’13’ as an homage to the (former) Thirteen Moons which has been the unofficial 4WW “headquarters” for most of our years together). Then towards the end of the year - generally sometime before the 4WW meet to plan for the following year - we go through the 4 summaries and pick our top 13 gratitudes for the year. Why bother doing this? Because it forces each of us, every quarter and at the end of every year, to look at our lives and be reminded of the abundance.
And we count our blessings, with gratitude.
from our adventure in France in 2009
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