Thankfulness is Your Best Ally in you Internal War
Today I’m thankful for…
Today I’m thankful for…
Today I’m doing a Thankful exercise twice as hard as I usually do.
Any overachiever knows this. It is incredibly difficult to focus on what we have and not what we don’t have.
If you are my mental type, you are constantly thinking about how to improve your surroundings.
What could be better around me?
Am I optimizing my processes enough?
And just for the record, when I talk about “my processes” I mean anything.
From the way I cook dinner and clean the bathrooms, to the specific crosswalks that I use to find my way home, and off course, the way I execute my work tasks.
But of course, being like this comes with LOTS of anxiety. So what did I do?
Years ago I found out about this very popular journaling technique consisting of forcing yourself to write down five things you are thankful or appreciative for each day.
From the fact that I could sit down at the metro, to a colleague paying me a coffee, or those 30 minutes that I spent playing with the kids.
I did the exercise for a while until it got in the back of my mind.
When I have a stressful time, the mechanisms behind that exercise resurface, and my brain starts automatically naming the things I’m thankful for on that day. It’s like an autopilot now.
Doing that has had extremely positive impacts on my mental health.
But today is a day that we should technically be thinking of the things we are thankful for.
Here’s my list:
I am thankful to have two healthy children.
I am thankful to have a loving husband.
I am thankful to have a place to call home.
I am thankful to have a very good job.
I am thankful that I have health insurance.
I am thankful that I’m healthy to enjoy my hobbies.
I am thankful that my family back home has all their needs covered.
I am thankful that I have the energy to start new projects. Like this blog.
I am thankful that I’m improving my mental health.
What about you? What are you thankful for today?
Today I’m thankful for…
