Why gratefulness is the only way to start my day.

If I had to venture a guess as to what was the most valuable virtue, I have been working on in my 13 virtues project, I would have to say gratefulness. I am not even completely through a full week with number five, gratefulness, but it has me thinking in a whole different light about how I approach my day, about how I approach the things that I do, the people that I am in contact with like my family and friends, and the things that I am able to do that would want to have been only a dream. Like walking with my foot completely flat on the floor that enables me to do all of the exercise that I do in the morning.

I will tell you a secret that I have been using to enable me to be more grateful and has changed my thinking 1000 fold. The insight timer, that I learned of through one of my readings, mind, hacking happiness, by Shawn Webb, is an app that is free to start. You can keep a free version of the app going to give you amazing meditations, donating if you would like to which I did this morning. You can also have a paid for version which is a premium membership for $59.99 a year. Five dollars a month to change your life? I think that’s a pretty good value.

This mornings, meditation, focused on gratitude, and was about 10 minutes in length. I am grateful when a teacher can pack more into less time so that you can get the benefit and go on about your day. It was a fantastic meditation and really got my juices flowing and how I am looking at my day in a grateful way.

Let me just explain a little something about why I am focusing on gratitude. I have noticed that it has amazing health benefits, and certainly mental health benefits as well. With a chronic illness, you can think of the day as pretty much just getting from one thing to the next, without falling, or doing all you can in the morning before you need to take a nap. You can be grateful for all of the things that you get done and think of it in a new light. It gives your life more meeting. It makes you more happy. This I know because it’s completely happening to me.

So that’s how I am starting my day, with a morning meditation. But what I didn’t tell you is that I am also going to sleep with a sleep meditation. Using my new halo app with my new glow fitness band from Amazon that I got from Planet fitness for extending my contract for another year. It is not only tracking the data that it collects from my activity throughout the day, but my sleep. Which is why last weeks virtue was focused on sleep/meditation.

It gives me focus the last thing that I do in the day, kind of like a set of parentheses. You start the day, focused and end the day focus. Last nights meditation I am so focused when I go to sleep this way that I fall asleep in 13 to 15 minutes. There is no rolling around in the bed. There is my leopard I mask and blankets up above me in a cozy position. My iPhone is right next to me and my light is shut off with my Alexa app so that I don’t have to talk to my echo. Dot across the room. Everything is now silent and I just go to my devices and shut off the light with the touch of my finger. I am very aware and very grateful for, the last moments of my day, awake or in such a peaceful place, my safe bed. And I start my day in the safe corner out of earshot of anybody who is going to hear me dictating this to my phone. There are quite a few things that happen to make this a blog post, but doing this every day, kind of like a journal has me refining my processes and it’s getting completely easier for me to do. I am grateful to share my thoughts with you and I hope that it brings you much happiness.
One last thing, my mom has been letting my son sleep downstairs for the past three nights. She calls it a triple sleepover. I don’t care what you call it, having my son in a safe place letting me get a decent nights sleep has also been tremendous for me. I am grateful to learn of the impact that sleep has on me and my mood, and in the ability for me to get things done with focus and attention, rather than having to redo things because I screwed up. I am completely grateful to my mom to let me do this. When it comes to raising a kid, it takes an army. I am completely grateful for my troop.