While surfing the web on Thanksgiving one year ago, I came across the website http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/ that lead me into my gratitude blogging and studying. That lead to my making a New Year’s resolution to blog about gratitude for 5x/week for the year (260 posts). Since I had never made a resolution that I had taken seriously in my life, I am as surprised as and even more pleased than anybody that this will be my 260th post of the year.
It is another great example of the progress I have made in my recovery to honor my commitments and exhibit healthier behaviors than how it used to be in my life.
This was a great weekend of progress for me. Tonight was the 10th year in a row of having a Gratitude Dinner at a local community center. The reason they did not have a Gratitude Dinner 11 years ago was nobody bothered to rent the hall in a timely fashion. I have rented the hall for the last ten years. I don’t do much else for the gratitude dinner beyond offer timely suggestions now and again to the dinner chairperson. Sometimes they follow my suggestions and other times they have a different approach.
We have done a remarkable job of getting a good turnout to fill the hall without creating the problem of having too many people in the hall. The is a fire marshall limit of 250 people in the hall for dinner. We print 300 tickets and try to sell them all. Due to some people buying tickets and not coming along with others leaving the tickets on their dresser, printing 20% too many tickets works for us.
Most of my life, I have been excessively passive about pre-planning social events. That would result into my going to the Gratitude Dinner and sitting with one other friend at a table full of other people I did not know. This year, I arranged to have a half-dozen people sit with me. It was a nice experience being surrounded by friends at dinner instead of acquaintances or people I did not know at all. I will do that again next year.
I made up gift-kits with a little how-to increase gratitude card in an envelope tied with a rose-colored ribbon. A few kits included copies of Flourish and others just card the card & ribbon. I passed-out 8 cards and 3 book-kits to friends tonight. That went well. Now I will have even more people to talk with about gratitude and well-being. The rose-colored ribbon was to remind people to view life with an optimistic perspective as if through rose-colored glasses.
I am grateful for the progress I have made in increasing my well-being, serenity, security and happiness this year. I am also grateful to my sister and friends for all the support they have given me in my recovery. I don’t know if god exists. I do know for a fact that my life goes better when I act as if there is a kind & loving HP out there for me. Thank you to my HP-belief… I am a spiritual agnostic! J
I hope you'll continue with your blog now that you've kept your initial commitment to do it.
ReplyDelete