Christmas is an amazing time.
But isn’t it strange how – no matter how healthy we are – we tend to get ill at Christmas time.
Cold… flu… infection… man-flu…
…which can spoil the magic of Christmas for you.
…and for your family and friends who have to look after you (or put up with you!).
Tony Robbins came up with a plausible reason for the Christmas bugs.
He put it down to diet changes, which upsets the body’s balance. The body becomes more acidic.
It’s all because at Christmas we eat much more acidic stuff, such as lots of meat, sweets and chocolate, and lots of other things that plainly aren’t good for us.
…as well as drinking a lot more alcohol than normal.
But whatever the reason… being ill at Christmas isn’t what you want to be.
Who wants to be lying in bed, shivering and sweating, whilst listening from beneath the duvet to the muffled sounds of everyone partying downstairs. Bah! Humbug!
Not me.
But guess what.
This year I was.
I’ll pause at this point to allow for sympathetic noises….
Anyhow…
After carting myself off to see the doc and collecting the antibiotics, I wrapped up in several layers, snuggled up to the hot water bottle (at this point I couldn’t care less that it was inside a fluffy pink cover! – thanks Christine!), topped up on the paracetamols, and tried to sleep it off.
Now I don’t know whether it was the infection or the antibiotics…
But I had absolutely no appetite.
Which isn’t the done thing at Christmas.
And absolutely no enthusiasm for anything.
What a party pooper!
Anyhow…
Why am I telling you all this?
It’s this…
No matter what you’re going through…
There’s always something to be grateful for.
So what… if your Christmas was spoiled.
There’s another one next year.
So what… if you couldn’t eat any of the rich food you’d spent a fortune on.
At least you didn’t put on weight this year.
Actually, I lost 4 or 5lbs.
And remember…
There’s goina be someone who’s much worse off than you…
Someone going through a lot more pain than you could imagine.
Why not spare a thought for them…
Spend a moment to pray for them…
Well… because I couldn’t be bothered to do anything else, I listened to a few podcasts.
And on one of the podcasts – The Kickass Life Show – the presenter, David Wood, came up with a suggestion which caught my attention.
He suggested keeping a “Gratitude Journal”.
Now one of my Christmas presents was a diary…
A traditional paper diary, bound in a nice leather-effect case.
But being an online Google-diary type of person, it’s been some years since I last used a traditional diary.
However, I didn’t want it to go unused.
And I certainly didn’t want to offend the person who’d been kind enough to buy it.
So when the idea of a “Gratitude Journal” was discussed in this podcast, I knew I had the ideal use for my new diary.
And ever since 1st January 2014, I’ve been keeping this “Gratitude Journal” diary up to date.
At the conclusion of each day, I’ll write at least one thing I’m grateful for.
In fact, one of the entries was that I’d lost some weight over Christmas.
What an achievement! Many people would be jealous of that!
And I’ll tell you what else I found about keeping the Gratitude Journal…
Finding something to be grateful for, every day, does something in us.
It changes the outlook on life.
It helps us find the positive things within those seemingly bad things in our life.
It helps us move the focus from disagreeable people we know – to good people who have a positive influence on us.
So why not give it a go.
Don’t wait for someone to give you a diary.
You can start with a note book.
Each day, record something new that you’re grateful for.
And just see what it does for you.
Leave a comment below, to let me know what you think… or if you have any other similar ideas… or if you’re already doing something like a “Gratitude Journal”… or simply to say you’re going to commit to creating one. I really look forward to reading your comments!
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