I am finding it interesting that my life seems to be coming full circle now. Many of the things that were forced upon me in childhood, I am coming back to... perhaps with a different perspective as to why they are important, but I think most are simply with a different understanding of myself and the world around me.
I was encouraged (read required) to keep a gratitude journal as a young person. the focus was to learn to "see every experience as a gift from God". The habit of keeping a journal quickly fell by the wayside...I kinda lack the discipline to write every day as you have seen from this blog, but I believe that it did strengthen my natural optimism.
Keeping a gratitude journal though, also served a destructive purpose in my life, albeit unrecognized and unheralded, it reinforced the belief that bad things happen because of "sin" in ones life. That "undesirable gifts" are punishments, that challenges are obstacles set in our way to make us fall rather than to make us stretch.
What I did not understand at that time, and would not for many years, is that the true purpose of keeping a gratitude journal is based in the Law of Attraction. WHAT one focuses on facilitates an expectation of fulfillment which culminates in an openness to the experience (in biblical terms it would be written: Seek and ye shall find, Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.)
So, by ending my day recording things I am grateful for, my mind is put in a state of watchful readiness through the night into the next day where I subconciously begin to watch for the things I am grateful for. Because I am watching for them or expecting them they appear out of thin air (or so it feels at the time) and I am free to enjoy the experience and start all over again.
A word of warning though, as I was taught that the following attitude is ok...
Do not think that being grateful that such and such bad thing did not happen to you will work... gratefulness is based on experiences that you have had, not the ones that passed you by. Being grateful that you have NOT had a negative experience brings about the same result as asking for the bad experience, because your focus is on the negative.
