I have spent a fair portion of this year searching within myself about what it is to be happy and how I can project it and also attract it into my life. I'm not perfect at it by any means but what I have learned along the way is that the simplest path to a greater sense of happiness and fulfillment in life is to be thankful for what you have and not focused on what you don't. Wayne Dyer the late self-help guru said "You become what you think about all day long", thinking about what you don't want leads to more of receiving the same. And so for me it has become the realization that I will find whatever it is I choose to look for. If I want happiness I have to look for it in my life.
I began a daily gratitude writing ritual where every day I would journal 5 things that day I was thankful for. It allowed me to really see that even in the most mundane aspects of life there is something of good that can be garnered - if you choose to look. My gratitude journal has really served to highlight that I have a good life. I recently got inspired to take my gratitude journal further when I listened to Hayley Bartholomew's talk 365 grateful. Similarly, she was in a space in time where she wasn't really happy and didn't quite know why. Through the practice of taking a photo every day of things that she was grateful for helped her to re-design how she viewed her life. The simple message is it's not so much what you see when you peer through the looking glass - but how you see it. As 2017 draws to a close, I feel today is as good a day as any for me to begin my own photographic gratitude journey and reflect on what my life means to me. Shall we begin?
