Daily gratitude

Rebecca Syrett wrote:I am grateful for the guidance I received to have a fire in the garden and to allow myself to sit and enjoy it's warmth and the flames that are mesmerising and  entrancing. Om Shanthi 🙏

Karen Marie Sully wrote:I also am grateful for the birds. It seems like I'm doing all the feeding but they are such a presence I guess they feed me as well.
Grateful for some time by the ocean.
Grateful for some self-honesty about last year's "dilemna" which I would have going until next year without the amazing respite of the warm summer in-between.

David Huang wrote:N Neta recently started a wonderful thread, the Capture Beauty Challenge offering the challenge to photograph and share something we find beautiful every day as a way to help cultivate such things in our worlds.  That got me to thinking a similar thread focused on daily gratitude might be a good idea.  It's something I've heard about many times and always think, "yeah, that sounds like something I should do", but then never really do it.  I see Greg Martin just started another thread also considering gratitude and shared a cool video on the topic.  It's so easy it seems to get all caught up in the reams of negativity and ugliness out there.  I find it can dominate my mind.  Yet, I also know I have control over my own thoughts.  Where do I want to focus my attention, and thus increasing my perception?  How do I want to cultivate the garden of my inner mind that shapes my views of our world?  Spending more deliberate effort training my attention to experience beauty and gratitude seems like a worthwhile practice.

So what I'm looking to do here is try to regularly (hopefully daily) share one or two things I'm grateful for that day.  I invite anyone else interested to join in as well and we can tend to inner gardens as a community.  These need not be big monumental things we are grateful for.  The simple, small aspects of life can be just as important, at least to us as individuals.  It may be interesting to have a quick read of small things others are grateful for, as they may be things in our own lives we are overlooking.  The goal is to be reminded of all the good things surrounding us we can take joy in instead of only dwelling in the negative.

I'll go ahead and start here.  While there are many things I am grateful for today a couple things stand out.  

First I am grateful to have finished doing my taxes for the year!!  It's a task I tend to stress over for too long before finally doing, so I'm glad to have them done.
I also struggle a lot with food addictions and I'm very grateful that today (so far) I've been able to overcome some strong craving demons demanding I go to the grocery store, buy junk, and gorge on it as a "reward" for doing those taxes mentioned above.  Instead I've found the strength to let my better self rule, eating food that nourishes me and costs less money (and has less wasteful packaging).

I invite you to join in and share a thing or two you are grateful for today if you so wish.