Over the past few years, I have been making it a priority to have a good feeling life. My long dedication has paid off in wonderful ways, because most of my days now are pleasant, peaceful, and just plain good. The absolute best way I have found to maintain a good feeling life is through appreciation.
Being thankful and/or grateful is similar to this. In fact, the very first positive change I made in my incredibly bad feeling life was to write down three things I was thankful for every day. Eventually, I realized my thankfulness had turned to gratitude, and now I simply call it appreciation.
The word appreciation might have a small distinction between thankfulness and gratitude, but it’s an important one, because appreciation has a far bigger good feeling attached to it (just try it and see for yourself). When I appreciate, there’s not even a tiny amount of bad feeling or obligation attached to what I’m feeling. It just feels good.
Another thing I have found is that consistency is vital to building a good feeling life. I can instantly lift any bad feelings by spending fifteen solid minutes really appreciating something or someone in my life. After that fifteen minutes, I can feel my mood lift, and as a result, the rest of my day becomes so much better. But then what about the next day? Or what if something or someone comes along and completely ruins that good feeling high? Yep, I find more things to appreciate.
The more I appreciate, the better my life gets.
Most of the time I spend time thinking (or writing) about what or who I appreciate and why (adding the why really gives the appreciative good feelings an extra big boast). But sometimes, I travel back in time thinking about all the things that have happened in my life to appreciate. When I do this, my blessings are compounded. I realize how blessed my life really has been, even in the dark periods, when I wasn’t actively looking to bring more positivity in my life.
When I first started, I may have spent maybe five minutes writing or thinking about what I was thankful for. Then I realized fifteen minutes once a day was far more effective. Now there are many days where I simply reach for appreciative thoughts without any real effort. But there are times, when some effort is required.
Just last week, I slipped into a few days where I felt bad. I let a lot of things get to me, and it left me feeling out of place and out of sorts. Just the idea of appreciating seemed too much to do. I just couldn’t get there, no matter how hard I tried.
So I just allowed myself to feel bad for a little bit. And sometimes we have to do that. We have to give ourselves permission to feel bad. But then those bad feelings passed, and I found even more things to appreciate than ever had before. So that bad feeling time was actually helpful to me, because it helped me reach for new things to appreciate.
See how it works!
Appreciate everything! Even the so-called bad stuff, because it’s the bad stuff that makes us appreciate the good even more. It’s an opportunity to catapult life into better feeling days. And there’s no better feeling than rising out of the darkness with new found strength and empowerment.
So I have learned an appreciation for all parts of life––the good, and especially the bad. And I now am constantly looking at things in life to appreciate. It’s become a natural habit of mine. Though, even today, I appreciate being reminded of the power of appreciation.
So here is a reminder (a gift to you), no matter where you are in your life journey to appreciate and appreciate some more. There’s so much in this life to enjoy, so much to feel good about. Why not focus on the good stuff, and reach for that good feeling life?
You deserve it.
We all do.
Love and Light to you all, and each of your good feeling lives.
Cynthia D. Griffin 