It’s such a small thing, but I’ve been doing this AM writing practice I call “Pages” in my bullet journal for about 6 months now and can positively report back that it is life-changing. On other fronts, I absolutely HATE the bullet journal color I selected (navy) and accidentally selected a lined journal instead of a dotted. I toy with scrapping the entire thing, all 75-pages in, but getting into all that is than I want to share right now. Gah!
Also, yes, I am that dork with a #Bujo and I love it. I start with an entire page of gratitude, listing whatever comes to mind. Lately it’s been a lot of appreciation for hot cocoa, cozy blankets, snuggles and movies with the girls, and hot yoga. OK, and Benadryl as I fight off a horrific cold. The rest of “Pages” is my To Do list for the day and a few lines of journal entry if anything notable happened — or not so notable.
I do want to mention that I didn’t INVENT this idea, either. It irks me to my core when people don’t give credit where credit is due, and we’re all inspiring each other, aren’t we? The only thing is, I can’t exactly quite remember who I picked this up from. I want to say it was in Emily Ley’s book, A Simplified Life. But it also may well have been something Jordan from Fun, Cheap or Free mentioned in a YouTube video. There! Credit given!
I didn’t do my “pages” the past few days that I’ve been under the weather and you know what I most missed? Making my Daily Gratitude list. And here is why:
One of my favorite meditations is called “Loving Kindness Meditation” where you basically channel love out into the world for yourself, for someone else (who you might have some friction with), and finally, for all. But before you roll your eyes, just know that I’m not that kind of yogi where I just know this stuff offhand. I picked this up from my yoga-page-a-day calendar.
Practicing for just ONE hour a week can reduce stress and inflammation which can lead to depression, heart disease and cancer. Incredible, right?
I try to remind myself to practice LKM as much as I can, but I realized that my daily gratitude list actually IS a form of LKM. And scientific research has shown that positive emotions like joy and gratitude surge in people who practice.
So there you go.
If you resolve to do only one thing in 2019, I can’t recommend a Daily Gratitude list enough. It has made all the difference.
Married with Style 