Gratitude Journal: I Am a Good Person

I am a good person.

But I am a good person with a lot of flaws.

One of my biggest flaws is that I nearly always look for the negative in people. If you ask me a simple question about someone e.g ‘What is so and so like?’ more often than not, I will answer the question by starting with a lengthy list of the not-so-nice things about this person. I don’t know why I do this. Perhaps I feel that by undermining another person it makes me look better to others. Or maybe by painting a not so positive picture about another makes me feel better about myself.

However, I shall not dwell on the why’s and why nots. All I know is that I carry this trait and I do not like it and I want to do something about it.

It has been really difficult for me to admit this flaw of mine – everyone wants to appear perfect, not so? - but at the same time it is refreshing, a release almost, to do so. By acknowledging this flaw, I can confront it, deal with it and move on. Something I have every intention of doing.

So today, I am grateful that I can be brutally honest about this.
I am grateful that I have the strength to acknowledge and admit this.
I am grateful that I am willing to make a change and by so doing become a better person. Because…

I am a good person.

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Today I am starting a gratitude journal. Something I have been wanting to do for years but have never got round to doing. I have started one a few times in the past but I always found myself running out of things to be grateful for. One of the reasons being that I focused on the ‘big’ stuff and overlooked the little things I should also have been grateful for e.g finding a parking spot, receiving an unexpected phone call/letter/email that brightened my day or even just finding a penny on the street. Little things but little things that mean a lot – if only we took the time to notice them.

I recently heard somewhere that the more we are grateful for the stuff we have in our lives the more we open up ourselves to more good stuff entering our lives. I like this thought.

And so this is the beginning for me. I decided to post my first journal entry here ( the only one I shall post because I get a feeling that many of the entries will be too personal to share on my blog) to perhaps encourage you to start a gratitude journal as well because, as I have heard countless other people say, it will change your life. I don’t know if it will change mine, but I sure as hell want to find out. Don't you?