Credit

I was recently writing names down for the credits section in Attacking Life and it got me thinking about how lucky I am to do what I do and I honestly have so many people to thank for helping me live out my dreams. Gratitude is a great giver of perspective and it's always a healthy exercise when it comes to reflecting on what goes into reaching my goals but beyond that it’s been something that’s become a staple on how I go about keeping me on track in life.

My relationship with gratitude has definitely had it’s moments and I think it’s important to look at it from both sides. On a personal note I started out skeptical when I found myself staring at a blank piece of paper trying to figure out what to write down. Naturally I scribbled down the obvious ones (Family, dog, health) and didn’t feel much better for it. But as a challenge I persisted and continued writing down the same things in a different order for a week until I talked to someone about it and they recommended being a little more specific with it. They said to start looking at little things in the day or maybe people in life that you could find yourself saying thanks for and that’s where my lists started looking a little different.

I won’t say that having these lists of specific little things that I’m grateful for change my life but it just gives me a moment to reflect on the day and look at the positives. After all this is a mindset exercise and I’d much prefer to try my best to be positive rather than negative so for me, gratitude is a tool that I find useful to help me be present, reflect and take note of where I am in life and it’s something that I do as often as I can (every day if possible but I’m far from perfect when it comes to this).

With all of that being said, I am well aware of the criticisms of gratitude and the difficulty that some people can have in trying to see positives in their current situation. I’ve long been a believer in doing things that make you feel good which I think is important because there’s no one correct way to operate when travelling through life. I’ve tried a bunch of different strategies when it comes to my health and wellbeing and if it makes me feel good, I keep doing it, if it doesn’t I drop it or try something different.

I think it’s essential to have self awareness when talking about things like gratitude because I’d never want to blindly force my opinions or beliefs onto other people even if it is something that helped me through the toughest time in my life when recovering from the attack. Why I chose that over other things like meditation or religion, I’ll never know but here we are, typing away my experiences.

Ask yourself what works for you? Whatever that is, keep doing that.

Today:

• Having leftover dinner that Mimi cooked waiting in the fridge for lunch

• To be an early riser so I can catch the World Cup action over the next few weeks

• Exciting opportunities in the next 2 weeks to share my story