Appreciating the Small Stuff – Page 3

Appreciation

Today is my final day of blogging everyday for the month of November and I’ve done it on two blogs! I did it as part of the National Blogging Month (NaBloPoMo). When I first started out with this personal challenge for myself, it came after months of inactivity blogging. While my main blog, Journey of A Spirited Strider, has been quite active since I started it in 2007, I hadn’t written on it or anywhere since mid-July of this year. My mother died this summer and I just didn’t have the motivation to write. But after an inspiration from Nancy Barry-Jansson, and after seeing the NaBloPoMo challenge (which I had attempted to do some years ago), it gave me the incentive to get back here to write.

Since I am a huge fan of appreciation everyday anyway, I figured it wouldn’t be that difficult to find topics. And it wasn’t. When we appreciate, we attract more in which to appreciate! In other words, a daily practice of appreciation creates opportunities to look at our everyday world in a new light. We automatically see the positive, rather than the negative in a situation, we set the tone for “having a great day” everyday and we are generally happier. It’s a great habit to get into.

So while I won’t be posting everyday from now on, I suspect I’ll be coming back here a bit more often as I’m reminded of how powerful it is to write down one’s appreciations.

Camera Phones

I am so grateful for the technology of camera phones! I love photography and love to capture moments wherever I go. But before camera phones became so handy (and before cell phones in general were so common), I’d have to carry around a camera in order to capture photos of things, people and nature around me. While I do have a pretty good camera, I’m finding that these days, I spend more time taking photos with my Blackberry camera! It takes nice photos and is easy to carry along.

So today, I’m grateful for the ease of camera phones and to show my appreciation, I’m sharing a few photos I’ve taken with my Blackberry.

I Hear You!

As I was signing into this blog tonight, and reading this blog’s title “The Gab of Gratitude,” it struck me that if I didn’t have the ability to hear, I would be limited in the “gabbing” that takes place in my world. So tonight I’m appreciation my hearing. While I’m sure that people born without the ability to hear are blessed with an extraordinary ability to tune in to their other senses, I’m just so grateful that I can hear!

I appreciate all the sounds in my world, especially talking with other people, music, cheering at a sporting event, the sound of trains passing by, the sound of babies, children playing in playgrounds, the television shows, the sound of cats purring, birds chirping, dogs barking, wind whistling through the trees, airplanes taking off and landing, water running, ocean waves, and so much more! I’m so glad to hear myself when I talk to myself, too! So I’m thankful for the ability to hear!

So take a moment and sit and just listen to the sounds in your world. Don’t you appreciate them, too?

Broadway Shows

Today I’m really appreciating Broadway shows. I love how easy it is to get last-minute tickets, too. I just did that last night for a performance tonight. What a wonderful way to start the Thanksgiving holiday–with excellent theatrical performances from top-notch actors, actresses and dancers in the business! I’m so grateful for Broadway, where scenes come alive right in front of my eyes and I can sit back and immerse myself in the plot of the story. So I’m appreciative and grateful for these wonderful creative works that provide entertainment to many from all over the world. Thank you, Broadway!

Gratitude Dance!

This is over 3 years old now and I still love it! So grateful for content like this on video, and for the uplifting and fun message of appreciation! As we approach Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., what will your gratitude dance look like?

New York City

I so appreciate New York City. There is so much to do here! I can either do things or not, but it’s always nice to know I have a choice. I love that I can go to great museums, restaurants, theater, musical performance and see inspiring speakers. I can find all kinds of foods at the local supermarket and incredible items at specialty places. People are always stopping into New York and I appreciate the opportunities to see them when they do. (I just saw Wayne Dyer again yesterday and Mike Dooley tonight.) And I’ll most likely take in a Broadway show this week with one of my daughters who is here for Thanksgiving. I love the variety of people and the visitors who stop by, too.

I love New York! And that’s not just some cliché! I truly mean it!

It’s Saturday, So Why Am I Up So Early?

It’s Saturday morning and I’m up at 5:30 a.m.! Why is that? While I’m not sure of the answer, as I had intended to sleep in, sometimes waking up early or even in the middle of the night provides opportunities for inspiration, writing and other creative tasks.

I’m not sure I’m feeling particularly creative right now, but I am very grateful it’s Saturday! 🙂 So I decided to do a tiny blog post in appreciation of waking up early and writing another blog post.

Actually, this is just another example of how we can turn what may not seem all that exciting (e.g. waking up early on a Saturday “sleep in” day) into a more positive feeling of appreciation for why it also feels good (I have a topic for my blog post today as part of my blogging everyday for a month at NaBloPoMo). Practicing gratitude everyday (and particularly in the morning for me), establishes a “tone” for my day that usually keeps gaining momentum throughout the day. What we appreciate, radiates and expands.

So this morning I’m grateful for reminding myself of the power of gratitude and the technique of being able to find appreciation in a situation where things didn’t exactly turn out as I expected. There’s always an opportunity to see my early morning Saturday as an opportunity to explore creative pursuits, leaving me free later on to watch my college football (or to take a nap later!), rather than moan and groan about how I really wanted to sleep in this morning and now I’m wide awake. Feel the difference?

Enjoy your Saturday!

Looking for Recipes? Try Food Press!

I just learned that there’s a new section for WordPress.com bloggers called FoodPress, where bloggers can share recipes and mouth-watering photos of food, too! What a great idea! I so appreciate having yet another internet-based place to go looking for ideas on recipes or other ways to prepare foods. I do love to cook so I’m loving FoodPress!

Check it out at FoodPress

I also appreciate the creativity of the bloggers and for those who created this idea! Thanks!

Lunch

At my day job, we order out a lot. We also occasionally bring in food and have a potluck. And, we often bring our own lunches. But what I like about my environment is how we often eat together. Now many people may not find eating with one’s co-workers that much fun, but I happen to really enjoy it. We spend so much time with each other, it’s almost like having lunch with our family: our work family.

Not everyone likes to eat together at work but I’m grateful that there are many of us who do. It’s a nice way to get to know each other, talk about “off-work” topics and occasionally share in each others’ food for that day, share jokes, stories and family recipes. We laugh and generally don’t “talk shop” when we eat, so it’s a good stress reliever, too.

Today I’m grateful for my work lunches with my office mates. I appreciate their company, and the fact that we all have jobs that put food on our work table every afternoon during the week!

Kind and Caring People

Yesterday I had several examples of people being kind and caring in which to appreciate. The first was related to one of my daughters, who was in New Jersey with one of her college roommates for the weekend. She joined me in Manhattan for the Iowa Hawkeyes game watch (and while we had a great time, our beloved Hawkeyes lost!), and then she was to take a bus back to NJ to join her friend. While I accompanied her to the Port Authority and saw her off on what we thought was the right bus, it turns out that it was not. Added to that was the fact that her cell phone battery had died, so she had no cell phone.

Before I left the Port Authority (and not yet knowing that my daughter was on the wrong bus), I stopped to buy a juice from a store there for my ride home. A woman with a young child was ahead of me, along with a customer who was buying, too. The woman with her child was told by the cashier that she was 50 cents short, so she gave the cashier a debit card, which was declined. The customer next to her reached in her pocket and paid the 50 cents. Later, the woman with the child found a dollar and tried paying the other woman back and they “discussed” whether or not she would take it. I smiled as I watched this exchange of gratitude, happy for the kind, caring woman who helped her out.

A little later, as I’m coming off of the subway, I received a call from a number I didn’t know: it’s my daughter, using someone else’s phone on the bus that was taking her way out of her way into New Jersey to places I’d never heard of! She used this man’s phone several times to call both her friend in NJ and me. In the end, she was able to get off the bus and wait at a restaurant (where there were more kind people who offered her things and didn’t require her to buy anything) until her friend picked her up. In fact, she said she got to watch some of the Ohio State-Penn State game! After she was safely in the car with her friend, my daughter told me that the man and his wife offered to drive her to her friend’s house, too, if needed.

While one might look at that last offer with a word of “caution” about not accepting rides from strangers, I think it’s evidence of the kind, caring people who were part of our day yesterday. We’ll never know for sure, but I am very grateful for that man letting her use his phone and helping her figure out where she had gotten “lost.” This was the second example of kind, caring people who offered their assistance to complete strangers yesterday.

And while I’m still in shock over my Iowa Hawkeyes’ loss from yesterday, I’m grateful I had the opportunity to share it with one of my daughters.