My writing tools, Part II: The Gratitude List
This is part II in my continuing series on my writing tools. For this installment, I will continue to explore the tools I use to connect to that spark of creation, the creative spirit or whatever you want to call it. To be creative, we must connect with that source of creativity we use to even get started on a project or to continue with an ongoing project. Today it is The Gratitude List.
The first thing I write in the morning is a gratitude list. This is a list of 10 things that I'm grateful for. I limit it to 10 things because some days, doing more seems like an overwhelming task. I also limit it to 10 things so that only the most important things get a mention. In the gratitude list, brevity is important. Keep it simple and short. Make each item easy to recognize for you, for this is your list.
Here is a typical example:
2018-02-22 - Thursday
- I'm alive.
- I have enough for today.
- There is peace in the house.
- I am at peace with myself.
- I'm on vacation in Vietnam.
- I bought some more Bitshares.
- I'm in an air conditioned bus, in the shade.
- I am learning to buy into the dip.
- I err on the side of peace.
- Alice, Emily, Natalie and I create peace, love and prosperity together, one day at a time.
I wrote that list while on vacation in Vietnam last month. Take note that some of these items are the same day to day. Others may change. But all are important to me, and the list is not exactly representative of the order of importance. It's my list, so I write it the way I want to write it. When you do your list, you're free to build it as you wish.
I type a list every day into a single document that I call, Gratitude List. I date each list so that I can go back and see how my life has changed. I sometimes list an affirmation, just to reinforce something that is going well. I've been doing this since 2008 and it has, in a very subtle and perhaps not so subtle way, changed my life.
What is important here is that before we take part in a creative act, we want to be on the right footing. We do that by expressing gratitude for what we have right now, without reservation or qualification. A gratitude list is the ultimate expression of our acceptance of the way things are. Once we are able to accept the way things are, we can begin to effect the changes we want to see in our lives. So why not start the day with the easiest things we can accept, the things we are most grateful for?
We do this no matter how we're feeling in the morning. We do it first thing in the morning to ensure that we can set aside any resentments, concerns or other baggage from the previous day to the previous decade. It is a fair statement to say that we cannot create a greater good without gratitude. It just too difficult to engage the creative spirit when we're thinking about a spat we had with someone we love, or a loss that still requires time to heal.
This isn't to say that you can't write a good article or engage the creative force when you're down. Popular music is replete with examples of people expressing their unhappiness. A great example is Yer Blues by the Beatles. In that song, John Lennon utilizes the angst and frustration of his time away from his love, Yoko Ono, while in India studying meditation. Here is a man who could have anything he could ever want, and he's singing the blues.
I use the gratitude list to give thanks to the many wonderful things in my life, however humble those things may be. I use the list to celebrate the simple pleasures, or the cool stuff, or the people, or the sunrise. It's all there, plain to see, but unless we take the time to acknowledge what is there, we may not see it.
For the gratitude list, seeing isn't just believing. Seeing is giving a little attention to that which makes our lives so dear, so precious, that we can find the creative spark that makes the act of creation so much easier.
Writing the gratitude list is what gives me the motivation to use the next tool: The Morning Page. I'll write about that in the next installment of writing tools.