Have you ever slept through your alarm by 30 min? Me too!

There is nothing worse than waking up late, having a quick cold shower and then jumping straight into a zoom meeting! Well, apart from skipping breakfast because someone ate the last pieces of toast. Again.

Another terrible day and it’s only 7:35am.

The truth is – there are some days where life can feel so tough on us. Yet we must find a way to carry on.

What I have grown to realise is that life is a period of highs followed by a period of lows. An ever-flowing cycle of ups and downs. So, if we celebrate the highs in our lives, maybe we should celebrate the lows too. I celebrate by using gratitude.

Sounds crazy right?

I have begun to make it a habit to prioritise self-care and take time to practice gratitude and appreciate the smaller things in life.

Yes, you woke up late and had the morning from hell. But you woke up!

It’s a new day. A day to create, share and accomplish so many great things.

When you think bigger than yourself and look at the whole picture you can stop being hard on yourself. 

As Melody Beattie says “Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” 

When was the last time you stopped to say today I am grateful for…? 

✨ my smile ✨

✨ my creativity ✨

✨ getting through another tough day ✨

Maybe you need to do what I did and look for the things in your life that you can celebrate right now.

When I ran my first 5km since my knee injury. it was raining, windy and I wanted to quit after 5 minutes. As I reached my milestone and saw the distance of 5km appear on my smart watch, I was so grateful for my body, my mind motivating me, my knee for not giving way and the progress. I was grateful I had made through the 9 weeks since starting the couch-to-5K program. I looked outside of the situation and looked inside myself.

At the end of the day, we all have tough days. Just look at 2020, it’s was a tough year for the whole world.

Research shows that something as simple as writing down 5 things you’re grateful for once a week can boost your happiness by up to 25%.

I invite you to stop what you’re doing right now and create your own gratitude list with this simple 5 step process:

Step 1 – Find something to write on

A piece of paper, your phone the back of a receipt. It really doesn’t matter what you use, the most important thing is you write your list down.

Step 2 – Take three energising deep breaths 

Breathe in for the count of 5, hold for 2, breathe out for 8. Repeat 3 times.

Step 3: Write down something your are grateful for

Some prompts to help get you started:

What do you see around you? What do you hear? How do you feel? What’s something someone has done for you recently? What have you have done for others? Or simply what things already in your life that you have taken for granted?

Step 4: Read it back to yourself out loud and smile.

Step 5: Repeat the process so you have at least 5 things you are grateful for

I dare you to do this each day for a week, and you will see how the process helps you become more present and bring so much joy into your life.

You’ve got this!

Nadine x


_{Photo by fotografierendeon Unsplash}

Tagged : gratitude