If I had to rename my children, one of them would have the middle name “Gratitude”. It really is the most beautiful, all-ecompassing, sums-it-up word in the world. And it’s the difference of a good day or a great day.

Thanks, Glennon for yet another wonderful post!

I just picked up Carry On Warrior and I am grateful, particularly for the chapter on birthdays. First, you and I are birthday twins (Happy Birthday coming up!) and second, when I first met my husband, we had to have a similar birthday seminar. If memory serves (and it was about 20 years ago), mine was not quite as articulate or well-executed as yours, which is probably why I had to share your chapter with the family last night. I laughed so hard that at times it was difficult to get through the reading. There might be nothing as comforting as finding a tiny mirror on our world. I took it as a sign that I was reading the exact right book at the exact right moment. Our family has been going through a very tough stage with a teen who has some special needs and sometimes it is hard to find the blessing in the chaos. But I’m grateful for a friend who shared your blog with me and for the light you shine on our broken lives. Thank you.

I cannot help but notice that of the quotes that bookend this post, both have something to do with eyes or vision in some way. So I have this stupid tumor in my eye, and it was shrinking after treatment, but now it might be growing again. It might cost me my vision, my eye, or my life; then again it might not. But, paradoxically, having it has helped me see a lot of good in my life that I might otherwise take for granted. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not grateful for the cancer. But I might as well be grateful for the insights it brings.

I am grateful for my children

Grateful for daylight and kids playing

Can’t put this on Facebook with my name, and just hoping you guys see it and can pray. Pretty sure my marriage is ending because of some major screwups by me with credit cards. I am too smart for this to have happened to, and yet it did. My husband is too much a black/white thinker to understand that while I know intellectually that I am screwing up, emotionally it happens anyway…and I know I have a problem that needs fixing but don’t know how to fix. And it’s true that I hid it from him, because I knew he would leave. Which he is planning to do. I don’t know if our relationship can be salvaged or not, and not sure he wants to. Just felt like if I shared a little bit of my brokenheartedness with you all, the universe of monkee prayers might help me through. Looking for any hope I can get, right now, even if it’s just anonymous.

Thank you. Yesterday I prayed for help to change my attitude from too much negative to positive. I think God answered my prayer. Thank you for the reminder of gratitude. Will begin tonight.

I’m so excited for this! I’ve been doing this for a while and it really does change how you see life…perspectacles really do work. You MUST have read Ann Voskamps 1000 gifts, yes? She’s all about this! My thankfulnesses from today are: money for a new raincoat, coffee, that someone else has put together a comprehensive packing list for our trip to Uganda and that I get to work with such cool high school students. I’m writing this now, not at 9:30 because I will hopefully be in bed by then! 🙂

After days of torrential rain, I am feeling so blessed by this one absolutely lovely sunny day! And the ability to go shopping and finding exactly the outfit I need to feel confident in meeting new members of the family!

My cousin Krista and I are doing this together. We are cousins by birth and sisters at heart. I feel so grateful to be united in this season to focus on giving up ingratitude. I know these 40 days will be full of miracles. I’ve seen them in 3! XXOO

Feel so lucky to have a beautiful, smart, funny friend who is going on gratitude journey with me. grateful for a good friend and a sunny day

I have no trouble with gratitude, and I don’t have any idea how that happened. I suppose I’m lucky someone taught me early or I came by it naturally. I’m grateful for that. 🙂 Gratitude is something I do naturally every day. I think it’s why I’m always talking about “silver linings” – because I’m not comfortable focusing on the negative and prefer to search for the positive. I truly think gratitude is why I’m such a positive, generally happy person.

People sometimes confuse positive and happy with “perfect,” thought, and perfect I am not. I have a bit of a social media addiction that I believe affects me and my family adversely. So I’m giving up FB for lent and will miss the gratitude waterfall. I will enjoy thinking of all of you there, letting your gratitude fall down like water. I know you’ll love it and it’ll be such good practice. Gratitude, like anything, gets easier with practice.

I won’t like to feel left out, though, so I’ll participate in my own small way at home with my kids. I’m not sure they’re very practiced at gratitude yet. We’ll make a paper gratitude chain, and they can each add a strip of each day. I think they’ll enjoy watching it grow, and reading it when they’re feeling not-so-happy/grateful.

Thanks for the idea, and happy lent! May you all experience the joy of daily gratitude!

:)MK

I haven’t gotten to the comments on FB yet because I have spent hours on the phone each of the last three night with tech support. I didn’t have my computer at all from last evening until 10:30 tonight, and tonight alone took over three and a half hours on the phone to try to make things right/bring my data back. I will try very hard to be grateful because I *think* it is fixed now (fourth attempt).

I’m grateful I’m able to have employment I enjoy, even through the occasional tedium. I’m grateful I’m able to have the freedom to take myself to places I want to go and the means to get there.

I’ve just been reading a bunch of the comments posted on facebook so far tonight and it really is a beautiful waterfall – moving, uplifting, me ‘too-ing’.

I posted on yesterday’s waterfall but still have my shyness about posting “out there” on the public Momastery facebook page.
Yesterday I kept worrying that posting I was grateful for certain people in my life would cause a pang of hurt to those who didn’t have those people still living. So I posted a little thing I was grateful for that seemed “safe”.

Tonight, I just want to say how grateful I am to have found this community and for all the thoughts, and ideas, and inspiration, and people that I have been introduced to because of it.

grateful for my coauthor and our galleys. Great day

I’m in !
xoxo
cathy

Wonderful idea. Thank you.

Almost 13 years ago I was a younger mom of 3 kids (1 more would come later..SURPRISE!) and I was in a major dreary funk. I decided to journal every night 3 things that I was grateful for. Slowly but surely my funk disappeared. The attitude of gratitude changed…and saved… my life. Now I do GratiTUESday on Facebook where I list 3 things I am grateful for…. in hopes of spreading the healing power of gratitude. Thanks for doing the same on a MUCH bigger platform. 🙂 Well done. 🙂

Beautifully put! I’ve kept a gratitude journal on and off (mostly off) for years…this may be the perfect excuse/push to get it rolling again. Thank you!

My friend and I started a gratitude journey together just over 14 months ago and I’ll never look back…it really is an enriching, life-changing experience. Your post here reminded me of the quote that started it for us, so I thought I’d share:
“No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.” – Barbara Brown Taylor

Good luck on this journey. It’s more difficult than you expect it to be those first couple months, but then it becomes second nature and suddenly your day becomes filled with moments of gratitude you never knew were there. I definitely recommend partnering; it’ll increase the accountability, the fun, and create and incredible connection and relationship between those who are doing it.

I fell asleep last night before writing them but did it this morning. I do want to participate….it is a great idea!

I’m joining you! I started mine last night, and was pleasantly surprised when I just couldn’t stop at 3… just kept going. There’s so much to be grateful for…even when or perhaps especially when life is painful. This is such a great thing we’re doing!! Thank you! Quoting Erin from this thread, “I’m going to be wearing new perspectables, starting today, thanks to you!”

Amen! Love wins!

Yes! I seriously need new perspectacles right now, perfect timing!

I would love a new pair of “perspecticles!!” Love it!!

I started doing just this in October 2012 after a suggestion by a yoga teacher. Every day for a year I changed my BBM status to state one thing I was grateful for.

Within a week, the change in my perspective was huge. I began slowing down and watching for good things, and putting aside my negative comments until the first good thing showed up in my day. Sometimes I woke up with it, sometimes it took hours. Those hours helped me look more closely at the world, helped me appreciate the little things, and reduced my (self-induced) stress. My friend, who blogs at likestosmile.com, started posting #gratitudetweets in November 2013 for the month leading up to Thanksgiving.

Glad to see gratitude growing, in whatever way it does.

I have revived my own gratitude journal in the past few weeks . . . encouraged to do one during a Brene’ Brown eclass that I was taking as a means to finding our way “home”. Home to the heart of ourselves. Home to where we are. Gratitude is the way to peace and the way home. I have found that my grumbling and resisting and fighting what is only creates knots, tension, and anger, not only in me, but in my relationships and in my life. So I have had days when I am fussing about my hair and I simply turn it around and thank God that I even have hair. When overwhelmed with pain in my body I have expressed gratitude to my body for all that it does to carry me through the day.

I have settled into a comfortable routine of doing a gratitude journal (usually five) in the morning before I start out my day. It seems to set my face to the sun, rather than focusing on the shadows of my life.

Thank you thank you Glennon for the honesty you share so openly with us all.

During cancer treatment, a friend gave me the advice to do this very thing (write down or think about 3 things I was grateful for that day), but to also plan 3 things I’d be thankful for the following day. This second step was really important, as cancer treatment is grueling and difficult and it’s very hard to look forward to anything, particularly waking up the next day and still having cancer, still being bald, still having treatments ahead, and still feeling like you’d been run over and stomped on. I found that reflecting on the day that had passed, and PLANNING to be grateful the next day, really helped to lift my spirits and anchor me in gratitude and positive thoughts.

When you first posted about this a few days ago I confess I pretty immediately dismissed it. My beloved dad died unexpectedly and prematurely at age 66 a few months ago and I am thick in the desert of grieving right now. To be honest not only did I think I had nothing for which to be thankful, but I kind of felt like I had the right, deserved even, to be ungrateful. The bottom dropped out of our family’s lives and everything feels hard- shouldn’t I get a pass to see the cup half empty for a while? But yesterday I received the most thoughtful and generous gift from two dear friends that made me feel so loved and cared for and profoundly grateful that I’m realizing that practicing gratitude may be what I need to move away from this desert. So I busted out a new little journal, put it next to my night stand and found three things to be thankful for last night. Half empty and lost in a desert of grief is not how I want to live this one life… Here’s to hoping your gratitude experience pulls me out of it.

Oh, there couldn’t be a better day to have read this idea than the day I found out my 17yr old daughter, who was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins, had a PET scan which showed she is CANCER FREE! Talk about gratitude-for famly,friends,doctors,nurses,strangers,strangers who became friends,an amazing support system and an amazing 17 yr old with the most positive attitude you would ever want to see!

I can’t meet you at 9:30 EST because that is dinner time in Spokane, WA PST. Here is my first installment. Thanks Glennon!

Yesterday was the beginning of Lent. Usually I give up wine and then drink cocktails instead. This year I am going to be more serious by practicing self reflection and gratitude. You see last year was a bad, bad year. I’m still recovering from the mess that was 2013. Now that the haze around my head and body has cleared up, I am overwhelmed by how much I have learned about myself in the process.

I turned 40 in November. It amazes me that at my possible half way point, I am just now becoming enlightened about being a healthy human being. Point in case, I am just now “waking up” to the serious problem I have allowing myself to really sit and feel “feelings.” I would rather take medicine, have a glass of wine, eat a cookie, then sit and feel a feeling. So today I am thankful for my friend and counselor Katie who is teaching me how to sit and feel (and not hide). MLB

Beautifully said.

I need spectacles AND perspectacles! Love this idea and am IN!

I’m in…I’ve been doing a version of this for a long time

I completely agree that a shift in perspective toward gratitude is key, crucial to changing how we feel.

I love this idea! I am starting this tonight with my kids. we will each list 3 things and then at the end of Lent, Look back and see ho w much we have grown in spirit! thank you! ( and I am grateful for you and this blog to inspire me to do better when I can and be okay wth myself when I can’t )

i love this! and need this..

I love this to the moon and back :).

I’m in!

Oh Glennon you just have to read Ann’s book! Please please!

I absolutely LOVED your idea and had an old empty journal laying around and on March 4 I started and love the discipline of sitting down and in a detailed way think about what I am grateful for!
Today #1 entry – A group of friends who showed support and encouragement in a small way, but in a way that made me realize how many people are in my corner! I am thankful for community & friends!

I’m grinning ear-to-ear at “perspectacles!!!” That’s great. And gratitude is actually such a fun process…..sometimes the things for which we are grateful are so big and obvious, such as restored health or the birth of a new baby. But sometimes they can be small and quiet….a big mug of hot tea first thing in the morning, or the way the pillow and sheets feel cool and fresh when you first lie down at night. I hope everyone’s perspectacles shed some new light on their lives these 40 days. Thanks for sharing your great thoughts, Glennon.

I’m going to be wearing new perspectables, starting today, thanks to you!

Ironically, I am on my way to literally pick up two new pair of glasses now. Twice the amount of gratitude today!!!

I’m joining you! Mine from last night: I’m grateful for the cross of ash on my forehead because it reminds me that I have been MARKED as Christ’s own. Let’s do this gratitude thing- I’m so excited!

I just started my 5th year keeping the daily gratitude portion of my blog. It’s an incredible exercise to find the good in each day, even the hard ones. It can also be fun to look back read entries from prior years. Keeping a daily gratitude journal makes every day count. I think this is a great thing you’re doing!

Thank you.
LOVE.