On to Day #2 of “The Gratitude Intention”!

Well everybody, we woke up again today and that is pretty darn good thing. I even woke up with a little energy to get into my gratitude routine! Thanks for checking out My Life Experiment to see what happened on Day two of “The Gratitude Intention.” For those that haven’t seen this blog before and want to be up-to-date on what is going on here then check out “Stay Woke with the Gratitude Intention.”

So yesterday I woke up even earlier than I did the day before at like 7:30 am! Hey, I didn’t have to be awake for another couple of hours so this is a big thing for me! Then I got my coffee going, got the cats fed, got my to-do list done and moved on to my gratitude list. Yesterday I only made it to five things to be grateful for and WHY, today I didn’t quite get to ten, but I did get to eight! I guess ten is going to have to be something I work towards.

Writing the gratitude list felt great once again! I spent a four-year period writing these gratitude lists every day, which I stopped doing about two years ago. Sometimes when I was writing the lists it felt very robotic, and I didn’t get much gratitude out of them some days. It seemed like I kept rushing to do what I needed to do out of necessity, and didn’t “stop to smell the roses” enough. As I get back into this routine I realize that at least part of my mission needs to be about making sure that I am putting some emotion into them, it seems to be the only way I get the FEELING of gratitude out of the writing process! I can sometimes seem like a Stoic and unemotional dude to others, but my history of immobilizing anxiety says there is much more there than meets the eye. The list is a good outlet for the energy.

In the afternoon I did manage to set aside the time to get my 10 minutes of gratitude meditation in! I didn’t lay down for it or anything like that. What I did was simply turn off the radio in the car as I waited for a client to get out of school so that I could take him home. I think it is so important to realize that all it takes to meditate is a little time (which can be very little), some quiet, and the willingness to turn down the go-go-go mindset that is so easy to spend an entire day in. In the last post on day one of the experiment I mentioned that I did not MAKE the time to meditate, but simply spent many different moments to make sure I was breathing well. It felt like a new little accomplishment to get that meditation in, though I did make sure to use what I learned the day before, and tried to do some mindful breathing as much as possible!

It was so nice to remember throughout the day that I am currently in an experiment to see how a routine with the Intention for Gratitude effects my life. Reminding myself that I will be telling a bunch of people about this process kept me paying much more attention to what I was thinking than normal (in a good way). This kept me alerted to times when my thinking began to get me stressed out. Then I just took a couple of breathes, relaxing on the out-breaths, and I pretty easily got back on track.

Fast-forwarding to the end of the night, I did my little ten-minute meditation while laying down in bed. My mind was racing a little bit about some current responsibilities, but I was able to slow it down with breathing and putting focus on the good in my day. Before I knew it, I was sleeping, I assume I made the ten minutes but never the less I went to sleep in a good place!

Of course tomorrow i will be waking up bright and early to get into the routine, and to fill you all in on how today went! If you want to know more, stay tuned. I deeply appreciate the attention you have given “My Life Experiment” and if you have any suggestions or any other type of comments please write them below. Also feel free to share this blog with anyone you know. Thank you for your support!

 

New Things Revealed:

• I realized that it is highly important to put some energy into my gratitude list to actually FEEL gratitude from writing them.
• I got a new reminder of how easy it really is to find a time to meditate, even during the middle of a weekday.
• I seen how simply knowing that I would be telling people about my day, kept me on track to keep myself grateful.

First Day of “The Gratitude Intention”!

Good morning everyone! So, if you read my last post you may remember that I set the Intention to cultivate gratitude to see if it helps me stay more alert and connected to my life. I decided that for every day of the experiment, I would also make sure to add a blog post the day after (hopefully first thing in the morning), to update any things I am noticing about the process.
Yesterday I spent my first day writing my morning to-do list and gratitude list, and taking time outs for gratitude meditation. I ended up waking a little earlier than normal to write my daily lists, I was somewhat groggy, but brewed up the coffee, fed the cats, and got down to “brass tax”. Generally, I would like to sleep in for as long as I can in the morning, because it feels great! Maybe the other reason is like my wife says, “because we will be parents soon and we won’t be sleeping much anymore!”
While I was writing the lists, I had a familiar feeling but a very good one. First of all let me show you an example of the first gratitude I wrote. “I am truly grateful that I get to wake up in this beautiful new home of ours every morning! I adore living here. As I walk around to our different rooms and see what Casey and I now own, I feel a ton of gratitude. It is such a gift to live here”. Suffice it to say after writing five of these (note that I set out to do 10), I was feeling comfortable and ready to start my day.
You may have noticed that I didn’t end up writing as many things to be grateful for as I set out to do. I am alright with this because even writing just five of them worked very well for me. I also didn’t find the time to take my ten to fifteen minutes to meditate in the afternoon. Although I did find little moments throughout the afternoon to take a few deep breaths, relax, and think about what there is too appreciate! That worked great, but I will be getting to the routine as planned, tomorrow. Though by going off track from the routine I was reminded how powerful taking a couple of good breaths is for getting myself back to the moment!

At the end of my night I got back into the experiment as planned. I laid down, closed my eyes, did some relaxed breathing, and for roughly 15 minutes I allowed the things I appreciated about the day to flow through my mind. It was a great way to end my night. When something came to my mind that felt like it added more pressure to the moment (such as scheduling issues, money issues, etc..), I reminded myself that I would get back to taking care of that issue tomorrow. I ended my day grateful, then dozed off and slept like a baby!

So day one was a positive experience, I seem to be honing my routine still, which is good. Today I am off on the right track and I will tell you more about it tomorrow! Thanks for checking out “My Life Experiment” once again or for the first time! Now here is a recap of some of the benefits I noticed from this process yesterday!

Benefits

-I woke up early just to get my lists done.

-I found myself naturally coming to use my breathing to keep me in the moment.

-I found myself thinking of more ways to be grateful for throughout the day.

-I was generally in a pretty good mood.

-I slept great!

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Stay Woke with “The Gratitude Intention!”

Hello again folks, thanks for stopping in! So, after completing the last experiment, something has been on my mind. Over the last couple day’s I have been thinking about how the decision and commitment to find more qualities to appreciate, seemed to frame my mind to see more qualities to appreciate. It also gave me a little boost of energy, put me in a better mood, and made life a little more interesting to live. There is something very cool about that!

For me, it seems that I can spend a little too much time not paying close enough attention to what I am doing. It is too damn easy for me to get locked into my daily or even weekly routine and then basically go into autopilot with what is coming up next.  Autopilot works alright for keeping things maintained for a while. But before long I find myself very bored, even stressed out, and probably a little more moody.

Thankfully over the last several months my wife and I have made quite a few decisions that have created more way more challenges to deal with. They are beautiful challenges, but they are challenging nonetheless! I had a job change. We just moved into a new house with a nice new mortgage to pay, and we have our first baby coming in just a couple months!  With these new changes there really isn’t much room for me to be day dreaming and going into autopilot mode.

I am happy to say that I am making the firm decision to use these opportunities to wake myself up to a better, more mindful way of living. The stakes are getting higher now, and there is no way I am slipping back into my comfort zone!

Now, back to framing my mind with my decisions, or I think I would rather call it “Setting Intention.” Over the next week I am “Setting the Intention” that I will pay better attention to my daily affairs. I will be more awake and aware of the options around me, the gifts they are, and the gifts that will come from them. In order to do this I am going to piggy back on “The Compliment Experiment” and work on staying in a state of gratitude in order to keep myself focused on the goodies that may be coming throughout my day.

For the next week I intend to take at least 3 opportunities throughout my day to cultivate gratitude.

1. In the morning, before I do anything else (aside from getting myself some coffee, and the cats some food) I will write a short To-do List to help get me focused on what is coming up in my day. Then I will write 5 things I am grateful for and WHY I am grateful for them. This routine is similar to a process I used for roughly 4 years that brought great benefits into my life, I welcome it back with open arms.
2. In the afternoon I will take a brief break to close my eyes and meditate for 10 minutes to do a little run through about the things there were to appreciate throughout my morning. Then I will say a heart felt thank you for all the good things there are to come.
3. Before I go to bed I will give another 10 to 15 minutes to give some thought to the things I have appreciated throughout the day. Then I will say a heart felt thank you for all of the good things that will be showing up tomorrow.

Like I said I will be partaking in this experiment for the next week. For the next week I will write short updates on any cool things I am noticing about the process. Also, I may post some articles about  about routines I that currently bring positive results into my life that once started as experiments, but now are just what I do. Thank you for checking out “My Life Experiment”. If you feel like participating in this experiment with me, feel free! If you do participate, I would love to hear about your experience in the comments section. One week from today  I will post the “Gratitude Intention” on Wednesday January 10^th!