My gratitude jar

Like most everybody, I have a job that sometimes can leave me feeling a bit beaten up. If I wasn't careful I found that I could transition into feeling like a 'done-to bunny', a teeny bit sorry for myself.

Years ago I began to realize that by consciously acknowledging the tremendous amount of good all around me my mind turned away from meditating on the things that hurt or worried me. I would write my thanks in a notebook but I constantly misplaced them and it just wasn't a satisfying activity. I didn't really want to reread them, I didn't wish to keep track of them. It was the act of writing it down that sort of solidified it for me and that's what I wanted, just to be aware of my blessings with gratitude.

Last year, my supervisor found she had breast cancer. We spoke about the change that illness brings to your priorities, what you come to value more than before. I wanted to find a way to help her see all the goodness in her life while she fought this rotten battle and I found this container. I got one for myself, too.

This is my gratitude jar and it's much more fun than a notebook! I cut some origami paper into small rectangles, popped them in a small container with a pen and when I am overflowing with thanks (or cranky) I jot the happiness down, fold it in half like a fortune cookie and plunk it into the jar. I give thanks for those things that already are and for things that are yet to be, believing that pre thanking must be a great time saver :) Slowly this has become a habitual way of thinking, an unconscious change that has crept into my heart.

I admit that I enjoy seeing a colorful manifestation of all that I have to be thankful for, it makes me happy to be grateful, I have found it a much better way to live :)

Sometimes my thanks are for very big blessings, but often they are tiny ones. The one you can almost read says 'I am thankful for my dog, Lewis'.
Wee Gus says hello to big Gus and everyone else :)