Story: Holy Shit, I have a Glass!

This is a story of the lessons gratitude journaling taught me.

Context matters.

I started this journaling because I was going through a depressive time.

I had experienced actual depression before and I didn't want to again and so, I decided to start gratitude journaling.

Gratitude was inaccessible to me.

I couldn't both feel that everything sucked and find space for appreciation.

I met myself where I was at and chose to just journal about what didn't suck. I journaling about what was decent.

Things like the weather, decent commutes to work, the flavor of my tea, anything I could call tolerable.

Lesson One: Meeting Myself Where I Was (Self-Compassion)

I knew intellectually, as a mechanical rule, that you shouldn't expect more from yourself than what you have.

Still, I'm a human. Knowing something and believing it are tow different things.

So, when I thought of gratitude, I thought of things that sat high on the self.

(We've got to define goodness for ourselves. I had another journaling venture that took me through that too. A tory for another day).

Here's where the lesson starts to show itself:

A this point, I've gotten a journal, I chose to keep it to help keep me afloat, and I met myself where it was.

This is significant because I was accustomed to "self-love" and "self-care" in a reactionary sense, just minding my immediates. You know, the basics like:

Tired of work? Take time off.

Annoyed with people? Go into introvert mode.

Low energy? Be lazy.

Bored? Seek entertainment.

Like a dern Sim just mindlessly filling up those needs.

Journaling was about being deliberate.

Just through having the journal,

I became a witness to my own care, a demonstrator of what care looked like, and the receiver of that care all at the same time. What a mix, how reciprocal.

And I didn't set out looking for those results, they just happened. There's a force in at work in that. Serendipity, to be exact.

Earning Belief

After a little bit of "decent-tude" journaling, I earned the belief that life was okay. That created space for me to notice what's good, gratitude in its more obvious form.

I began to appreciate the little things. I saw them as wins, gifts, magic, blessings, all of that.

Lesson Two: I Expect Good Things (Optimism)

Gratitude journaling made me optimistic. How?

Well, journaling regularly about good things in your day turns life into a scavenger hunt for good.

When you find good, over and over, you start to expect it.

How else would you define optimism if not "the expectation of good" ?

I started wake up with "so what does today have for me?". I looked forward to every day.

Lesson Three: Awareness

Gratitude journaling is nothing more than practice in noticing. It just comes in the flavor of appreciation. On top of that, gratitude journaling is perspective practice.

Think about it.

When you journal, you have to deliberately picture your world. If you do it flavor or gratitude, you have to find the good things in that world. Consistently finding good things your world makes you look at it differently.

I have to make a point here to say, this is why it is so important that we define "good" for ourselves instead of accepting the social presets.

For somebody, a coffee in the morning is small-beans and only societal markers of "success" will get them out of bed in the morning.

Nobody's congratulating you because you had your morning cup. For somebody else, the smell of the coffee makes their day and they cheer for themselves.

In your journal, you choose. Decent-tude may be enough for you.

Lesson Four: Holy Shit, I have a Glass

Because of awareness, instead of the glass being half full or half empty, I began to see it as "holy shit, I have a glass".

In other words "I get to witness and I get to participate". If my depressive moment sent me into giving up existentially (not to be confused with self-harm and suicide physically, but instead spiritually). My gratitude journaling venture was my spirit holding my body's hand showing me that I had a choice in the matter.