VISIONS AND GRATITUDES

Follow your bliss...view of Seward's beach on a clear and chilly winter morning

As we enter 2017, I'm grateful for two habits that I'm bringing with me into the new year. One focuses on looking forward, while the other is about appreciating the past. Both offer a way to pause and reflect on all that has happened and what it is that I want to focus on in the coming days.

About 2.5 years ago, I wrote a post called "Imaginative Living." My partner and I continue to follow the process I described in that post of writing and discussing our 1, 5 and 10-year visions at the beginning of each calendar year. We're getting ready to do this again over the next few days by reviewing the visions we wrote down in years past (7 for me and 5 for him) and then writing our new ones down. It's really interesting to look back at what we imagined and how those visions have manifested in our lives over the years. Some were exactly spot on, while others happened slightly differently, but essentially according to what we imagined, and still others have morphed into something else or did not happen at all. One thing is certain though, our visions have come into greater and greater focus over the years, so that today we are pretty clear on what it is we aspire to do and become, even if we're still figuring out how to get there exactly. 

There is another part to this process that I started in 2014, but only really committed to at the beginning of 2016. It is the morning ritual of writing down one's gratitudes for the events that transpired the day before. Even though this process may appear tedious at first, it really has done wonders for my level of positivity and satisfaction toward myself, others and the world at large throughout the year. What I hadn't realized however, is the magic that this simple, yet powerful ritual would offer at the beginning of the following year. What do I mean by this?

Collection of my gratitudes from 2016

Well, part of the ritual is collecting all of the daily gratitudes in one place, so that at the end of that year or the beginning of  the next one, you can look through all of the gratitudes and remind yourself of all the good things that happened during the previous year. I just started to do that earlier this week with the gratitudes I had written and collected during 2016, and boy has it been fun and meaningful! It is such an easy way to recollect both the small and big blessings that graced my life on a daily basis throughout the previous year. It is also a great way to celebrate those memories by sharing the highlights with your loved ones, as I do with my partner. This added gift has offered us a chance to pause and remember the good, focus on the good, and aspire to create more good in the days to come.

Happy visioning and thanksgiving!
~Modern Akhmatova