{"id":130,"date":"2014-01-04T15:53:48","date_gmt":"2014-01-04T15:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidwithington.com\/blog\/?p=130"},"modified":"2014-01-04T15:53:48","modified_gmt":"2014-01-04T15:53:48","slug":"an-olde-fashioned-diary-made-a-bad-christmas-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidwithington.com\/an-olde-fashioned-diary-made-a-bad-christmas-good\/","title":{"rendered":"An Olde Fashioned Diary Made a Bad Christmas Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christmas is an amazing time.<\/p>\n

But isn’t it strange how – no matter how healthy we are – we tend to get ill at Christmas time.<\/p>\n

Cold… flu… infection… man-flu…<\/p>\n

…which can spoil the magic of Christmas for you.<\/p>\n

…and for your family and friends who have to look after you (or put up with you!).<\/p>\n

Tony Robbins came up with a plausible reason for the Christmas bugs.<\/p>\n

He put it down to diet changes, which upsets the body’s balance. The body becomes more acidic.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

…as well as drinking a lot more alcohol than normal.<\/p>\n

But whatever the reason… being ill at Christmas isn’t what you want to be.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

Not me.<\/p>\n

But guess what.<\/p>\n

This year I was.<\/p>\n

I’ll pause at this point to allow for sympathetic noises….<\/p>\n

Anyhow…<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Now I don’t know whether it was the infection or the antibiotics…<\/p>\n

But I had absolutely no appetite.<\/p>\n

Which isn’t the done thing at Christmas.<\/p>\n

And absolutely no enthusiasm for anything.<\/p>\n

What a party pooper!<\/p>\n

Anyhow…<\/p>\n

Why am I telling you all this?<\/p>\n

It’s this…<\/p>\n

No matter what you’re going through…<\/p>\n

There’s always something to be grateful for.<\/p>\n

So what… if your Christmas was spoiled.<\/p>\n

There’s another one next year.<\/p>\n

So what… if you couldn’t eat any of the rich food you’d spent a fortune on.<\/p>\n

At least you didn’t put on weight this year.<\/p>\n

Actually, I lost 4 or 5lbs.<\/p>\n

And remember…<\/p>\n

There’s goina be someone who’s much worse off than you…<\/p>\n

Someone going through a lot more pain than you could imagine.<\/p>\n

Why not spare a thought for them…<\/p>\n

Spend a moment to pray for them…<\/p>\n

Well… because I couldn’t be bothered to do anything else, I listened to a few podcasts.<\/p>\n

And on one of the podcasts – The Kickass Life<\/a> Show – the presenter, David Wood, came up with a suggestion which caught my attention.<\/p>\n

He suggested keeping a “Gratitude Journal”.<\/p>\n

Now one of my Christmas presents was a diary…<\/p>\n

A traditional paper diary, bound in a nice leather-effect case.<\/p>\n

But being an online Google-diary type of person, it’s been some years since I last used a traditional diary.<\/p>\n

However, I didn’t want it to go unused.<\/p>\n

And I certainly didn’t want to offend the person who’d been kind enough to buy it.<\/p>\n

So when the idea of a “Gratitude Journal” was discussed in this podcast, I knew I had the ideal use for my new diary.<\/p>\n

And ever since 1st January 2014, I’ve been keeping this “Gratitude Journal” diary up to date.<\/p>\n

At the conclusion of each day, I’ll write at least one thing I’m grateful for.<\/p>\n

In fact, one of the entries was that I’d lost some weight over Christmas.<\/p>\n

What an achievement! Many people would be jealous of that!<\/p>\n

And I’ll tell you what else I found about keeping the Gratitude Journal…<\/p>\n

Finding something to be grateful for, every day, does something in us.<\/p>\n

It changes the outlook on life.<\/p>\n

It helps us find the positive things within those seemingly bad things in our life.<\/p>\n

It helps us move the focus from disagreeable people we know – to good people who have a positive influence on us.<\/p>\n

So why not give it a go.<\/p>\n

Don’t wait for someone to give you a diary.<\/p>\n

You can start with a note book.<\/p>\n

Each day, record something new that you’re grateful for.<\/p>\n

And just see what it does for you.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0I really look forward to reading your comments!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[50,51,23,55,56,42,14,52,47,48,53,54,49,20],"yoast_head":"\nA Christmas Illness, Tony Robbins, A Diary, and Gratitude<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What happens when you get ill at Christmas? Does it spoil your Christmas? 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