The Gratitude Experiment

As someone who has always been wildly and continuously healthy, I decided that my illness is God's way of giving me the gift of something brand new. Once I started thinking about all of this as a gift, it got me thinking about all the other gifts that have come my way in recent weeks. And thus the gratitude experiment was born.

Sometime each day, especially when it is a day that I feel like crap, I am trying to think of five or six things that I am especially grateful for. There are lots of them – from the fact that my chemo is working to the wonderful dinner someone brought me last night to my beautiful children and the lovely cards and messages that are coming my way. Or the energy that helped me write a new chapter, an incredible sunset, the gentle neck massage I got from my husband and the gorgeous flowers I received from a dear friend. The gifts are everywhere.

In the past, I have tried to remember to be grateful for the things I've been given in my regular life, but most of the time I'm just caught up in the muck of life. So right now, in the interest of doing something new, I am doing the gratitude experiment. I find that there is something incredible about methodically cataloging the big and small gifts received each and every day. My mind gets clear and energetic and I feel especially, vividly alive.

So here's a little gift that I would like to give back to you, in the hope that you won't have to learn this particular lesson in the way that I am. Try the gratitude experiment. See if it works for you. Maybe you could get something out of all this without having to have the cancer - wouldn't that be fabulous? Or rather one more thing to be grateful for?