52 Weeks of Gratitude :Week 1

Hello everybody!

I have been issued a challenge! One that a very inspired friend of mine, Erin (also a fellow blogger) issued to me. She did this in the inspired hopes that I won't neglect my brain child (aka my blog) for months at a time anymore.

So here it is! The 52 weeks of Gratitude Challenge.

Week One: Why start this challenge? 

I really want to say "she told me to", but truthfully the answer is really not that simple.

I recently had an experience where the advice was given to me to look for the blessings in my life hourly. This task seemed nearly impossible, as I was struggling with some serious stress and hormone induced female hysteria didn't help in my favor being added to the mix. 

How could the solution be that simple, yet seem like such a colossal requirement? When life gives you more lemons than you can reasonably make lemonade with, how can you find the small, clear grain of sugar that can make them more bearable?

Truthfully trying to think about something hourly wasn't realistic in my mind. Working where I do it gets busy and it can get busy fast, so there would be times where I would look at the clock and three hours had gone by and I had not thought of one thing I was grateful for. But I learned one very important thing pretty quickly. It's not a case of quantity vs. quality, it is a matter of habit forming. 

I realized that this advice was more than just some fluff or chore. This task of looking for the things you're grateful for, even when there are seemingly none, is actually a good way to help build habits to look for the one positive thing in that moment. And positivity (as irrational as it may seem at the time) will make all the difference in how you handle it. 

Wallowing in negativity and self-pessimism is not an option for me. That's not how this gal rolls.

Besides where does it honestly get you?

Searching for things can start off so basic, quickly working up to more complex things that require deeper thinking. Before I knew it I was grateful even for my trials. Those hard things that even in the moment of wanting to pull my hair out and drown myself with tears in my pillow- there I was trying to think about the possible blessings that I would receive from that moment, even if I was looking ahead to the longer term end game. What skills or lessons I was learning in that moment What beautiful new insights was I learning in my human existence?

It turns out all the sugar is found at the bottom of that pile of lemons. It may be a struggle to sift through and find them, sometimes it takes forever for us to even see them, but I promise that they are there, and there is more than enough to make your lemons just sweet enough. Even if it is barely helping. The truth is that sometimes lemonade is more bitter for others. But I find I prefer the bitter. Because harder trials force us to face our limitations and push past them, growing ourselves in the process.

Despite these happenings and revelations I had, I managed to drop the practice pretty quickly of finding my gratitude. And now I recently am finding myself standing on the edge of that slippery slope, which spirals down that same emotional roller coaster that triggered this whole thing for me. And getting back into this practice is definitely something I should be doing. It pulled me out of it the first time when circumstances were far worse than they are now.

So my friend's challenge to me was more inspired than I think she realized at the time. She was hoping to help me find my blog's soul. Little did she know it was also helping my own and I am grateful to her for that. ;)