Interdisciplinary Psychology:

Sue Wagaman

Feb 10, 2008

Activity three—Three Blessings

Before I began this activity I really thought that I “count my blessing” already.  I did not write down my blessings but I did try to think about them and notice when they happened throughout the day.  Well, I was wrong.  When I consciously had to think and write out the good things that happened in my day I found many things that I hadn’t noticed consciously come to mind.  In other words, I had blessings that would have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t taken time to think about my day and the blessings in my day. One such blessing was a small thing that I almost forgot about if I hadn’t had this activity to do in the evening.  Our oldest son called to get relationship advice from us.  This may seem small but he often keeps things inside so I was very happy that he thought of us when he needed someone to turn to.   I also noticed that during the week of this exercise I began to notice a pattern in what I chose to remember.  Therefore, I decided to try hard to think of blessings in an area of my life that I don’t notice.  Examples of this are, I notice how my kids are a blessing ‘overall’, but not the specific reasons.  I think I am lucky to have a job I love but not the specific examples of why I love it.  One day when I was looking for specific’s I realized that my daughter, Amanda had told me how much she appreciates me and feels lucky to have me as a mom.  She also took her younger sister to Starbucks with her just for fun.  Many times I do notice these things but I don’t realize the importance of them.  When I wrote them down I realized how I am lucky and blessed to have a 19 year old daughter that thinks she’s lucky to have me as a mom and one who will hang out with her 12 year old sister.  Many times I would have just said to myself…my kids are loving, nice and good friends to each other.  In contrast, when I am thinking of actual examples it reminds me to see specifically what they are doing and why this is a blessing.  Another example of this was last Saturday during my classes I had a participant tell me she loves my classes because I make them so fun especially because I seem to be having so much fun.  Since I have members tell me this weekly, I was ready to just file it away and feel happy that members like my classes.  When I wrote down the specific example it caused me to remember that not everyone gets these compliments every week and I shouldn’t just discount it.  It also helped me think about “why” the members feel this way and this not only made it seem more personal and special but encouraged me to keep it up!  Thinking about and writing down my blessings was a good way to see what I consider blessings.  Most centered around family, friends and work (although this was centered around people too).  I also felt lucky and blessed financially to be in the process of building a house and an office building.  But those things did not resonant quite as high as the blessings of “people”.  As stated in my gratitude letter response, I also realized that I go about my day knowing I am blessed but taking it for granted.  When I did this activity it helped me to put into words “why” I felt this way and how much I had to be grateful for.  It also helped me to focus on the positive, not the negative.  Another benefit for me was, usually before going to sleep I lie in bed and go over all the things I need to do or what didn’t get accomplished or what went wrong that day.  This activity helped me to try and put that aside and focus on the positive.  I think I will continue to do this, maybe not every night but at least a few times a week. This is a great activity for life and one that I really do need to practice more.