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One of the things I love about supermarkets is the way young people on the checkouts often ask the same question: “How’s your day been?”
I always see it as a nicely informal greeting which somehow conveys genuine interest in another human being, even if it is stock standard, and it never fails to prompt a positive response from me.
Spontaneously, I reply, “Great! How’s yours been?”
Last week at Woolworths in Turbot Street I extended the conversation, as I generally do if it’s getting late in the day, to asking the young woman serving me what time she was knocking off and commiserated when she told me she was working through until 9 o’clock.
“Yes,” she replied, “it’s late but I’m so grateful I have a job.”
Her answer brought to mind Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of the Gratitude Journal as proposed by Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of Simple Abundance.
“At the heart of Simple Abundance,” the author says, “is the belief that true contentment ….exists in the creative choices we make each day and the awareness and appreciation of simple pleasures.”
The Gratitude Journal she claims is a tool capable of changing the quality of our lives. Each day, she proposes, we should write in it five things for which we are grateful. Over time this process will lead to an inner shift in our reality to contentment and hopefulness.
For those of us who aren’t given to keeping journals there is another way of using gratitude to change the way we view our lives. This can be done by simply shifting perspective. For instance, instead of thinking, “I get no satisfaction from my job,” look at the situation from another point of view: “I am grateful I have a job to pay my bills while I pursue interests which make my life more satisfying.”
Even better, set out two columns on a piece of paper and in the first write down all the things going on in your life right now, especially those which you are not particularly happy about. In the second column, respond to each of these with a grateful statement. For instance, one of the dissatisfactions could be: “My apartment is small.” Looked at from another perspective the response might be: “My apartment is a reflection of me and my friends feel relaxed and welcome when they visit.”
One last word: choose happiness. Happiness begins with a decision. Don’t look for happiness; look for reasons to be happy and build even small moments of joy into your day. Keep doing those 10 Daily Habits which give you happiness and fulfillment.