2013 Jar of Awesomeness

2012 was a tough year for us. It was a good year though, full of many amazing things. If I'm not careful with my thoughts, I have a tendency to dwell on the things that were hard rather than the things that were amazing.  I've noticed recently that my daughter has this same tendency. When she comes home from school and I ask her how her day was, she almost always says it was a bad day. When I ask why, she'll say something like, "Well, I didn't get to be the line leader....somebody stepped on my hand during story time...William said my head band was not pretty...my teacher said Ellie is the best artist in the class instead of me...etc." So I've stopped asking her how her day was, and instead I say "Tell me 2 things you loved about your day and 1 thing you didn't love."

I'm making an intentional effort to use positive words around her, to praise her when I see her doing something well (like sharing with her brother), to say out loud things I love about my life, to avoid complaining about things I don't love about my life, to take delight in little things throughout the day, and then make a point of verbally expressing my delight. It's good for her to hear these things, but it's also good for me to say them.

We recently started keeping gratitude journals, just Clara and me. I bought her this journal, and bought this journal for myself. Every night (or at least as often as one of us remembers), we sit down together and write 4 things - very specific things - we are thankful for from that day. It only takes about 10 minutes, but it helps us both end the day focusing on the good things in our lives. It's fun to see the things she chooses to be thankful for - things like her Bunny, getting to wear her jammies to school on Pajama Day, finding out that the doughnuts at school on Pajama Day were peanut-free, that she got to buy a pencil sharpener at the school book store, and that she doesn't have cancer.

Although the gratitude journals were a good first step, Clara Beth reminded me the other day that this will be an ongoing struggle. She said that 2012 was a bad year for her. She said there were so many bad days, more bad than good. She couldn't give me specific examples, just that she felt like she had a lot of bad days in the past year. Of course, in my opinion, this girl leads a very charmed existence. It's hard to even imagine how she can not love everything about her life. But I know her - I know how her brain works. I know her because she is just like me. And dwelling on the negative is something that comes all too naturally to me.

So we are starting a new tradition in this new year. I'm borrowing my friend Jen's idea to start a jar of good things. We call it our "2013 Jar of Awesomeness." I pulled out an old Mason jar and let Clara Beth decorate it with window markers. I bought colorful post-it notes and placed them beside the jar. Any time something awesome happens during our day we can write it down on a post-it note, date it, sign our name, and place it in the Jar of Awesomeness. We can periodically pull out the papers and read them if we need a quick reminder of the awesomeness surrounding us. Then at the end of the year, on New Year's Eve, we will empty the jar and read about all the awesome things that happened this year. And look...we've already started! There are 2 little awesome papers already in the jar from today. A day full of awesome.

Because sometimes we just need a little reminder. Awesomeness is all around us...if we only take the time to stop and notice it.