November is a reminder to ALWAYS be thankful.

     Today is November 1st. The day we begin to put away Halloween decor while attempting to keep our sugar covered mitts out of  the kiddos' candy buckets placed just high enough we can reach them. This is first day many deem "ok" to start looking ahead to the holiday season. If you're like me and you attempt to give Thanksgiving it's rightful time and thought (rather than skipping right to Christmas, although the Friday after Thanksgiving it's game on!), it's your time to really reflect on what you are thankful for.  I love that. I mean we have been told our entire lives to "Just be thankful for what you have."  I think that saying should be so much more than a way for a parent to quickly get a kid to can it.  How many of us actually stop and take a minute to actually do that, be thankful for what we already have. I mean outside of the Thanksgiving season?

     In Chicago I belonged to this really supportive mom's group. As a whole, we were full of life experiences, intense journeys, knowledge, love, compassion, and a true need for one another in our lives.  One of the gals who I really respected always spoke of this book "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp.  I mean it came up MANY times. Any one who knows me knows, I am not a reader. It's just not what I enjoy. I would rather, hike, bike, swim, do nature stuff in general. Well after hearing about this book so many times, I thought it was time I give it a whirl. Now this book is not an easy read. I mean sometimes the sadness is so so sad, and sometimes the words are wild.  That being said, it's great. The idea of it amazing.  The author challenges you to keep a journal daily of things you are thankful no matter how big or how small. The more things you are thankful for, the better! It's training your brain and your heart to focus on the positive rather than the negative (which we so easily tend to gravitate towards).  Training you to see blessings in even the darkest or hardest of times. I can't say I have stuck to it.  (I am totally guilty of getting really excited about something and then not sticking to it or becoming increasingly uninterested).  I can tell you, however, that when I practiced the thankful journaling, it made me feel happier!  It really did make a difference. 

     When we moved to San Diego a year ago we were pretty broke. I mean we hadn't even begun to save for a move when we took the plunge.  We felt like we were being moved by God to relocate, like right then and there was the time we NEEDED to do it. We decided to pray and fast over the idea for a week before doing anything to further the process. After that week, we felt very much like God was saying, "Yes. This move is for you. This is what you should do."  Within a week and a half of sending out his first resume, Daniel was being flown out to San Diego for a final interview.  By 3 weeks, Daniel had 5 offers on the table, had accepted one, and had moved to San Diego.  I stayed behind with the kids for a month to tie up loose ends, pack, and work lots of over time.  The plan was once I arrived I would give myself a month before I tried to find a job, and just relax and settle in.  I have a hard time sitting still though, and was hired at a salon only a few days after our arrival.  Starting over as a stylist is HARD! I mean there is like zero money in this industry until you have spent at least a year building a clientele. AT LEAST A YEAR!  I always feel like there is a way I can be doing more, especially when it comes to my family.  One day scouring the Craigslist jobs ads, I found an ad for an experiment for stressed out parents of toddlers.  I want to say it just said they wanted you to journal and be honest. It paid like $40 and hey that's a couple of dinners, right?!  I agreed to do it, and met up with the UCSD student at a Starbucks near the salon to learn more about the experiment and what would be expected of me. It started out with lots of questions about me.  Basically they wanted a feeling of your happiness level, how you feel towards your kids, and to be sure you weren't mentally ill. I answered lots and lots of surveys online.  The questions were like, "Do you feel like your toddler does things just to spite you?", "Do you feel like your child is worse behaved than other children?", "On a scale of 1-10 how happy are you with where your life is?", "Do you think your life would be better without your kid(s)?", and many more along those lines.  Once they decided I was mentally stable enough to continue with the experiment, I was given a 3 ring binder journal.  Inside, I was to daily write things I was thankful for, or that things made me happy.  Then, at the bottom of the page I would have a scale to rate my overall happiness for that day.  Once I had done that for a full month, I again met with the student at Starbucks. She asked a series of questions and jotted down little tidbits from our conversation.  To end the experiment I was asked to again answer the exact same online surveys I began with 30 days before. Why am I telling you all of this you wonder?  The results of the experiment were awesome.  Pretty much every single one of us stressed out parents of toddlers, who actually participated correctly, rated our happiness higher AND answered ALL of the survey questions more positively after journaling our daily thankfuls for just 30 days! How wild!  Just bringing the things we have to be thankful for to mind on a daily basis can actually make us happier!  Training yourself to see the positives!

   Some of you probably saw this on Facebook already.  If not, here it goes.  I know there are all kinds of "Novemeber Thankful challenges", and all are really great. I, however, would like to challenge you to start a daily thankful journal.  You can post it on your Facebook, journal it, or whatever will help you acknowledge it. Rather than thinking through your past for things, keep track of things you are thankful today, right now, in the present, in real time.  I think you will find that even on the hardest day, when you feel like you are in the absolute thick of it, there are still things to be thankful for!  If it helps, then hey! Maybe you could even continue on past November.  Thankfulness isn't limited to just one time of year, and if you are anything like me there definitely days I need to be reminded of all the good stuff! 

     I will be attempting to add my "thankfuls" to this page each day for the month, both for myself and to give examples.  (I mean they really can be the silliest small things.). However, I find for me keeping a small notebook in my purse to jot them down seem most efficient.  

   Alright my friends, Happy November! 😘