Gratitude Journals x Awareness.

Though I do advocate for the forming of your own, unique journaling ventures, I cannot have my own journaling philosophy without a "story" to anchor it in.

The philosophy is in the connections between what I learned. The recurring themes that resurface and connect my journals is what my philosophy is based on.

No rules, habits or "supposed-tos".

I tracked the happenstance that was already governing my journals and acknowledged them as law.

Awareness came first. I practiced becoming self aware though gratitude journaling. The goal of the gratitude journal was to keep me afloat during a depressive time. It was by accident that I came to respect gratitude journaling as a practice.

I want to highlight the "accidental" part.

Discovery is learning. You don't learn something because someone told you. You don't learn things though cultural platitudes or what your brain stores as "common sense". You learn things through feeling it yourself. Why? Because these lessons are actually earned. You appreciate what had to create with your own hands. Meals taste better when they're made from scratch with love. Why?

Epiphanies cannot be handed to you. You have to earn them.

Knowledge in a vacuum is an isolated fact. What can you do with that? When factoids are embedded in you and they start to spark together and talk to one another is when you get that "aha" moment. It's when the nodes of facts line up in your mind to form a new spark. You can't just be handed an artificial spark... I mean, you can.... But you'll be performing understanding instead of actually understanding. You an pretend you know the word to a song but and it might sound kinda right but it doesn't take long the that lack of true knowing to show itself.

I explain this in so much depth because we need to lay everything out. There's so much stuff (beautiful stuff) online about life, how to life it, how to do it right, what things you can do to improve it but we don't vomit anything out. Were scared to be cringy or to appear self-important.

Anyway...

Gratitude journaling accidently took me on a tour of awareness. Gratitude is nothing but awareness. It's taking notice to what you have that you didn't ask for. It is through the lens of what's pleasant (which makes it rewarding and makes you want to come back for more) but at it's core, it is just practicing being aware.

This is very important because awareness is what reveals your options. Awareness is your "do I take the blue or the red pill" moment.

If you're in "life happens to me" mode, awareness will make you see that you have the option to switch to "life happens for me" mode or even "I co-create with the universe" mode (whatever your flavor).

If you're aware of your brain, if you start thinking about thinking (metacognition) you're on you way to deciding what you think about, deciding what you believe, deciding the perspective you want to take.

Gratitude journaling isn't some cushy practice (it is) but it is also walking in the wardrobe. It could be just an old closet, or it could be a portal to somewhere else entirely.