If you are newly reading my gratitude posts, I hope to encourage you to find a new way of tracking the things your are greateful for each month with me. Just to give you a few ideas, you can join in by keeping a gratitude log on your phone, a journal or simply check in with yourself mentally once a month. If you want to go even further, you can try using negative visualization as a tool to foster gratefulness for the things you have now.

(This year I hope to expand more on the topic of stoicism and may create a weekly challenge for those interested!)

Who or what you are grateful to is completely up to you! Personally I choose to be grateful to my creator YWHW.

unsplash photo cred @manufactured

A New Year

I am honestly happy about the new year because we get to say good-bye to 2017! It sounds like I'm stating the obvious but if we look back, 2017 was an anxiety trap. Sure there were great things that happened last year but it seems that all of our strides were coupled with a negative twinge. Em I right?!

For example, the daily trump hating news parade, the aweful and ceaseless natural disasters, the constant dribble of sexual misconduct accusations and overall just the rampant speed of which negativity is now able to spread in our world of lighting fast technological communication.

Any way I'm glad were over that and that we can move on to a new year with hope and gladness in our hearts.

A Year of Awakening

In 2018 we have the opportunity to say 'No' to the constant dribble of negativity and anxiety inducing news feeds. We also have the opportunity to control the way we react to unfavorable news and events happening all aound us. We can choose today to say

I will not be controlled by fear & anxiety. I will no longer be a pawn of the negativity around me. I will choose peace in the face of chaos.

May this be your prayer for 2018. That we may be able to live alongside the negativity of the world but not be partakers in it by blindly reacting to it's calling. Let us be vigilant and awake to the things we allow to affect us this year.

I am so grateful that in a world of chaos and uncertainty, we can choose to control how we are to react to it today.

A Year of Resiliance

I won't promise you or myself that 2018 will be the best year yet. However, if we are real with ourselves, we can hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Preparing for the worst doesn't mean you have to sacrifice happiness however. In fact, even a small act as practicing gratefullness is a way of preparing for the the worst and becoming more resiliant.

Being gratefull for the things we have now, allows us to mentally check ourselves with the possiblity of not having those things at some point. Knowing that we have things to be grateful for teaches us that other's may not fair as well as us in that department. Even just taking a few seconds to envision a life absent of the things we most treasure today will go a long way in preapring us for a more resiliant 2018. In a nutshell, envisioning loss and misfortune is exactly how negative visualiation can help us foster a grateful heart. I am thankful for the tools we have to help us get there.

Here's to a New Resiliant and Grateful You!

Attitude of Gratitude is my way of sharing what I'm currently grateful for and the things that have aided me in my own personal practice of Stoic Christianity. These two things have played a large role in my path to healing and spiritual recovery after baby loss. Each month I will do my best to post the top three things that I am currently grateful for.