Was Larry The Cable Guy. He came to my relatively small town during the pandemic and was one of the acts that was not canceled.
He was so funny and this was a special night for me because I got to see, in person, and be in the same room with one of the men that my grandpa and I would watch on TV when I was a kid.
Back then I didn’t really understand why my grandpa laughed at his jokes though I would laugh because my grandpa was, but as an adult I was able to appreciate the humor in a more genuine way.
I just didn’t do it! I had every intention of making the twelfth post. Still, in my mind, I justified not doing it because it was only a reflection post asking how the gratitude journal has helped you and I didn’t see that doing that had as much value as me doing my final school work would. There is that, and there have been two adorable babies at my house that my mom’s friend’s daughter just had so I’ve been loving on them.
That being said, I am now homework free for the rest of my BSW education (only got one week left), so I am finishing this post now. As you will notice if you have been following along with the prompts, the first 11 I made as story posts. The reason I did that was to shake it up a little and because that seemed to be the most aesthetically pleasing. But since this post is an evaluation and reflection of how the gratitude journal for the first 11 days has been helping me, I wanted to make this post in a bit more depth. I also wanted to be able to explain why I started this challenge and explain what happened to the last post.
As I started doing the challenge I immediately started to notice a change. I didn’t magically start feeling better, but I started to notice that when I was asked to come up with one thing I was grateful for while completing each of the prompts, I was flooded with reminders of even more good things going on in my life to feel grateful for, like the nature in the world around me, the love from my family and close family friends, and my improving physical and mental health despite having chronic conditions.
The challenge was not always the easiest, as it required me to do some deep thinking about the things I take for granted every day like my 5 senses or the different types of weather that no one seems to like ( such as rain and overcast). The challenge also asked me to do some emotionally taxing tasks like writing a letter to my future self and looking within myself to find what strengths I’m grateful for. those tasks might not be as draining to someone who doesn’t struggle with self-esteem issues, but I am a person who goes through phases of feeling ok with my self-image, to feeling really bad about my self-image. with the strengths prompt I literally had to take a moment before I came to an answer because I needed to think of some of my strengths.
In any case, I am extremely happy I carried on with the first 11 days of the gratitude journal and it is something I plan to keep doing on my own time. by the end of the twelve days, I was feeling happier and more ready to tackle each day that followed. So it might not be magic per-say, but there are a lot of positives that come with seeing life from a lens of gratitude.
Mental Health Blog | Fight4mylife | United States 