A habit of gratitude

I woke up feeling incredibly stressed about work, so I decided that a good, easy, calming habit to work on for April would be the habit of gratitude. At least gratitude is supposed to be calming. So I hear. I’ve always been a fairly grateful (and, until recently, calm) person in general, so I’ve never gone so far as to write in a gratitude journal or make it a deliberate practice or anything like that. I don’t know if I would even go that far now—I guess what I’m going for is just to remind myself throughout the day to stop and be grateful for the good things in life. And maybe blog or Instagram about them once in a while.

Anyway, in my absolute-ball-of-anxiety state this morning, I tried to calm down and think of some things I was grateful for.

• ATTEMPT ONE, PARAPHRASED: “I’m really grateful that Horrible Thing A that I always worry about has not happened. Yet. No, wait. I’m grateful that Horrible Thing B has never happened to me. Oh, those poor people who it has happened to. It could still happen at any time. No, wait…”
• ATTEMPT TWO, PARAPHRASED: “I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector!”

So that was a bad start. But this evening, as I was looking out the window at the FREEZING RAIN falling on the walk I had planned, my mom happened to call from the car on her way to the mall, where she has been walking with my sister several nights a week. And I was right in time for her to pick me up and let me join them, which was really, really nice and exactly what I needed. So I am grateful for that.

It is amusing me to no end right now that Entry One in the gratitude register is mall walking.

April storm

It’s a new month, so it’s time for an ambitious new habit, preferably something that takes advantage of the spring weather, like…[looks out window]…staying inside in a comfy chair with slippers and coffee!

Here’s a reminder of the habits I’m already trying to keep:

• January: Eat more vegetables (doing fine on that)
• February: Take shorter, cooler showers (I will recommit when the weather warms up)
• March: Start every day at the standing desk (I wouldn’t call it a habit yet)

The very good news for April is that I negotiated fewer hours with the company that is keeping me over-the-top busy, starting next week. That is just in time to help me meet a major deadline for a different client, but hopefully by May the work crisis will be substantially over. One can hope.

At any rate I think I’m going to need an April habit that’s either very easy or very helpful to getting lots of work done. Gotta give it some more thought.