A Moment on the Lips
Did gratitude allow me to get up at 6am and be on my laptop writing this post at 6.35am? Nope. But it helped. Gratitude is one of my “new things” except this “new thing” has kind of stuck. It has become a thing. Gratitude and affirmations have become a huge part of my day. Not because I dedicate lots of time to practice gratitude or affirmations, but because a little practice every day goes a long way. And I have become a huge believer in little changes. Tiny changes every day have made a massive effect on my life. Being grateful has definitely got the ball rolling. Here are some of my favourite ways to practice gratitude.
Dear Diary
Okay, so to be clear, I am not even for 3 seconds expecting you to write the names of your adult boy crushes in a book with glittery gel pens. I mean, you can, you do you. But this goes a little bit deeper. I use a journal every single day. Even at weekends. Sometimes I write superficial things down just so I can draw a line through them. Like brushing my teeth, or putting on socks. Because the little things matter. And it is amazing just by writing such minuscule things down that you can remind yourself how much you have achieved.
But journals are completely awesome for encouraging you to organise your life. My journal used to be the place that I purely wrote work stuff. Email Sandra back. Invoice Pikachu. But now, I diarise everything. Every morning I schedule some time to practice gratitude, read for strength and watch YouTube videos that help me feel motivated. I even schedule in some time to write in my health journal (yep, I even have one of those!) Diarising even 5-10 minutes in the morning to practice gratitude can make a huge impact on your day. And your health.
The British Love Cues
Not queues, cues. I have found the smallest ways to be grateful to myself. For example, every Saturday, I scrunch up some newspaper for the fire. I don’t put it in the fire but put it in a box so that when I come through on a Sunday morning, I don’t have to scrunch. Scrunching is BORING. But on a Sunday morning, I could kiss myself for scrunching the day before.
And I have started doing this with everything. Don’t like coming through to a mess in the morning? Tidy up the night before. Feel great when you make the effort to look fly but can’t be bothered doing a catwalk in the morning? Decide on an outfit the night before. Finding it difficult to make healthy choices? Meal prep! Lay cues out for yourself to make the very next day, or even the next hour, an easier one. You have no idea how grateful this will make you feel. And grateful for yourself too.
A Learning Curve
This is a biggy. A huge-y. If there is one thing I have learnt, it is that life will never be just marshmallows and puppies. Quite the opposite actually. There will always be huge, angry and sometimes completely idiotic, curveballs. It is how you handle those curveballs that makes the difference. I try and look at everything now like it has happened for a reason. Like it is testing me and making me stronger and that I will learn from it. When you start looking at challenges in this way, you start to welcome them. When you start to see bollocks situations in a way like they’ve been sent to test you, you will tackle them in a much more organised manner. It really is a learning curve.
Hey Baby, I Think I Wanna Kon Mari You
I recently took some inspo from Marie Kondo and Kon Mari’d all of our clothes – much to Aye 2.0’s disgust. It took me the best part of a Sunday afternoon to dump all of our clothes on the bed before folding them into adorable little bundles. Adorable little bundles that I folded in such a way that I could see everything I own at a glance when I opened a drawer. It has changed my life. Now I Kon Mari the clean washing like I’m running on rocket fuel.
I also got rid of a heap of crap. Anyone else collect crap? Or worse, keep clothes because “one day I’ll fit into them?” That’s me. My wardrobe and drawers were full of questionables. What the Kon Mari method teaches you is to be grateful, even for the crap, before removing it from your life. It teaches you to say thank you to the items you are getting rid of. Why? Who knows? But it works. The Kon Mari method is gratitude at it’s finest. Small bit of work – large impact.
Practice Gratitude
There are some fantastic videos on YouTube to help you practice gratitude. Start small. Be kind to yourself. This isn’t going to be an overnight change. Changes, of any size, take practice. Practicing small changes is what allows them to become habits. I started by spending just 4 minutes every morning listening to a gratitude video that literally just asked me to repeat certain phrases to myself. I am strong, I am grateful, I am enough. But those short and snappy phrases paved the way to bigger things. Allow your small habits to pave the way for big changes.
Gratitude turns what we have into enough.
