My Gratitude Month of November. 118/2019.
For my seventieth birthday month, I decided to do something different via instagram photos and post about:
G R A T I T U D E
My November Instagram Challenge:
On Being & Feeling Grateful.
For my Birthday month: 70 on 30 November 🎂
I want to share & celebrate #gratitude #givingthanks #reflectingonlife #celebratinglife
Do join me! 😊
Today is 1/30.
With each photograph I added all the reasons for my gratitude. I took some time to collate the collages in October and then filed them in an album ready to publish. I used various backgrounds for the bottom section and words of gratitude too as well as making sure I had the date (and day of 30) added.
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- Gratitude for my husband
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- Grateful for my parents & family
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- Grateful to live in Sydney for years.
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- Grateful to be a loved little girl.
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- My gratitude for coffee…
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- Oh so grateful for our family
About Gratitude.
I was not someone who came easily to the adoption of having a grateful outlook and to show appreciation for what ‘is’ and what I ‘have’ and ‘feel’. I was taught by my husband that I needed to see gratitude more and adopt an attitude of gratitude as they say. Well, I started small. I could change some of my thoughts and feelings around by adopting gratitude and I sensed the difference it made in me.
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- Grateful for nature.
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- So grateful to meet these people.
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- Very grateful for my HS education
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- Grateful for the nature I notice
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- Gratitude for my opportunities
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- Grateful Grandma!
I listened to Gratitude Works!: a 21 Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity by Dr Robert Emmons and, even though there was a religious thread through it, it did not detract from the messages of thanksgiving and gratitude for me.
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- Gratitude for beach side life in Manly
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- Grateful for succulents & patterns
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- So grateful for meet-ups!
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- Family is always a reason to be grateful
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- 2 & half years of gratitude post cancer diagnosis
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- Gatitude in spades for my professional HNC team
In the newest little book of his I have, The Little Book of Gratitude, he explains much better than I, the power, value and essence of gratitude:
A 2015 article in the popular journal Scientific American reported that, out of 24 strengths, including powerhouses as love, hope, kindness and creativity, the single best predictor of good relationships and emotional well-being was gratitude.
Gratitude is not just good medicine, though, a nice sentiment, a warm fuzzy feeling, or a strategy or tactic for being happier or healthier.
It is also the truest approach to life.
We did not fashion or create ourselves, and we did not get to where we are in life by ourselves.
So living in gratitude is living in truth.
It is the most accurate and honest approach to life.
“GRATITUDE is, first and foremost a way of seeing that alters our gaze”
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- Grateful for places I go to reflect.
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- So grateful to grandparent little ones.
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- Gratitude for my ‘post cancer’ mouth
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- Grateful for little cakes.
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- Very grateful for art,especially mandalas
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- Grateful to know, meet and love these authors
Rounding off the Month of Gratitude.
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- My Prosthodontist & Nurse- Grateful For Their Compassion & Skills
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- Christmas Spirit – always grateful!
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- Grateful for Grandkids. Grateful to be Sharing the Dignity
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- Head & Neck cancer support – always grateful.
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- My Improved Health: SO Grateful
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- Grateful for My 70th Birthday
We are at the dawn of a global gratitude renaissance. Unprecedented interest in the science and practice of gratitude is so welcome because this is what gives us the strength of character to make life better not only for ourselves but also for others.
From Robert Emmons’ The Little Book of Gratitude’ I follow him on twitter: @Dr_RobertEmmons
What are you grateful for today…and every day?
Denyse.
Joining each Wednesday with Sue and Leanne here for Mid Life Share the Love Linky.
On Thursdays I link here for Lovin Life with Leanne and friends and on Fridays, it’s Open Slather here with Alicia.
Copyright © 2019 denysewhelan.com.au – All rights reserved.
That’s a lot of gratitude. You did so well to keep it going as a pictorial reference for 30 days. Yet another reason why I love Instagram.
Thank you. Once I began it was relatively easy to keep going.
I made just about all of the collages in advance and had to number them as I ‘forgot’ the order. It went well for me. In fact I tend now to think more readily in terms of what I am grateful for.
Cheers
Denyse x
I really enjoyed following your Gratitude month on Instagram Denyce. Some of your posts really had me thinking. A great thing for you to do in your birthday month #MLSTL Will share
Thanks so much Jennifer.
I did dig fairly deeply to consider the overall areas of gratitude for my 70 years of life!!
Cheers
Denyse x
I suck at keeping challenges I set myself so I give you a big HIGH FIVE for your commitment to your gratitude month. Some lovely pics and thoughts there Denyse. Xx
I think I am more committed these days to challenges because I have the time and motivation.
I understand too that it’s hard when LIFE actually disrupts us….
Thank you so much Sandra.
Denyse x
🙂 Xx
You did well to put all of these together Denyse – and it’s always so energizing to see how much we have in our lives to be grateful for. ATM I’m grateful that we’re on holidays over on Rottnest with the sun, sea, quokkas, and no cars, no barking dogs, no idiots – just lots of families and people enjoying the beauty of this little island paradise. So restful and lovely to be away from the every-day-ness of life.
Thanks for linking up with us at MLSTL and I’ve shared on my SM 🙂
Yes I am really #grateful (lol) that I was able to decide to do this and then follow it through.
Summarising it here now gives me a record of it all in one place.
Keep on enjoying that lovely timeout you are having!
Denyse x
What a great effort Denyse, you are so creative and your gratitude attitude shines through! We all have so much to be grateful for, we just need to stop for a minute and think about it! #mlstl
We do need to stop and think of what we are grateful for. I have just ordered a 366 day desk calendar of gratitude quotes and inspiration. I read that gratitude is like a muscle so we must keep using it.
Food for thought isn’t it?
Thanks Deb for your kind words. As always!
Denyse x
Denyse, these are an amazing creative work of art! Beyond the every day gratefulness, each one is just lovely. This month I started a daily gratitude tracker. Nothing as lovely as your images… but I, too have heard the research and am hoping it will help me continue to grow. I’m so grateful you gathered these all together and shared them vis #MLSTL.
Thanks Pat, that is very kind.
I believe that whilst my images and words helped me then, even in the preparation I must not get complacent.
I do wake each morning with the usual ‘humdrum’ thoughts but now I am better practised at gratitude, I am able to turn them around.
It’s taken a while to get to this point, in fact I read today that feeling grateful is like a muscle. it must be used.
Thanks again for your kind words.
Denyse x
Well done Denyse on your commitment to the Gratitude Challenge. I loved seeing your images and your commitment is inspiring. Thanks for sharing at #MLSTL and reminding us to be ever grateful for the good in our lives. xx
Thanks Sue, I am glad you have enjoyed seeing the images and my words behind each of them.
It really did help me to feel better about much in my life to prepare for this and then do it each day.
Expressing and feeling gratitude is the same as daily fitness, I am told, it must be practised for the benefits.
Cheers,
Denyse x
You did such a great job showing your gratitude during November Denyse! I love how you did them as collages like that. I need to revisit gratitude as it has slipped somewhat for me and I know it worked wonders for me years ago when I needed help. xo #TeamLovinLife
Thanks so much Min. Visual me did enjoy the planning and preparation for the month. I put together the collages the month before, printed them out and pasted them in a gratitude diary in the order I believed worked well in balance and appropriateness.
I hope you get back to gratitude. It isn’t something to do because you have to, only if its a want to!
And you need to start. It was hard initially for me but each day, before the November challenge, I felt gratitude more easily in even the smallest ways.
Glad you are feeling well again.
Denyse x
What a great idea! I love it! Gratitude is definitely something we all need to practice. Visiting from MSTL.
Thank you Amy, I really enjoyed doing this and we all need to remember gratitude more…each and every day!! I am trying to more than I did, for sure.
Denyse x
I enjoyed following your gratitude posts on Insta last month. I know we’ve spoken about it and how we were both not sold on it way back but have come to realise how helpful it is! I need to focus more on it daily though – I seem to have slipped off that wagon.
Yes. It so is. Your small gift is next to my bed and I am writing on a leaf from the tin each night. Then I put it underneath the blanks and it will be interesting to see what I wrote when I have used them up.
Yesterday I read a great post on the Gottman Institute site and it was about ‘thanking others/showing gratitude for them’ rather than seeing gratitude as an ‘inward experience totally. Will find it as I save it on FB and send it to you.
In the birthday month, I decided to send each of my family (from Dad to the youngest GD) a card of gratitude for having them in my life and what they have contributed to my life. I heard back from some ‘that it was lovely and thoughtful.’ I know I enjoyed doing it but it took a bit of me being vulnerable to do so!
Happy Sunday…and I hope the week ahead is a good one.
Denyse x
Oh god Denyse, I need to so take a leaf out of your book and remember how bloody lucky I am in everyday life. You never cease to amaze me with your great words of wisdom, such an inspiration. Keep sharing your brave and grateful life xx #openslather
It’s taken me a few years to realise this for myself…and it’s a never-ending job to keep remembering gratitude over whingeing/worrying.
However, as the experts say, via the research – ‘keep using the grateful muscle’…needed to remember today when I got cranky at the shops: Christmas crowds and all that!!
Cheers Alicia,
Denyse x