DIYW: Gratitude Practice for Photographers

“Everything is a gift.”

— David Steindl-Rast

There aren’t many things in life which everyone agrees on anymore … “gratitude is good” seems to be one of the few left. Over the past two decades, numerous studies have shown that expressing gratitude makes us happier, healthier, more likely to succeed, and more resilient. If there were such a thing as a panacea, gratitude might be it.

However, all of these studies were based on doing something to express gratitude … whether it was writing a note to someone who helped you, writing in a journal (even once a week), or saying thanks at the dinner table. Practicing gratitude is the key to unlocking dopamine and serotonin, the “feel good” hormones that produce positive effects.

In order to make gratitude a regular practice, it’s important to integrate it into your life in a way that makes it enjoyable. No one needs another chore to make us feel bad or guilty about not doing it. So, how can you DIYW (Do It Your Way for those of us over a certain age)?

Link it to something you already enjoy.

I’m a photographer and love looking at past photos or having a reason to go out and shoot something new and interesting. Here’s one way I’ve linked photography to my gratitude practice.

Take or find a photo of an interesting scene then find all the things you can be grateful for in that scene. Try to find 3–5 for each scene.

Sparks Marina, Reno, Nevada

My gratitudes:

• I am grateful to have had this beautiful place to walk when I was in Reno … who even knew that Reno had a Marina? … and for the incredible day and light that made this photo possible.
• I’m grateful for reflections that turn ordinary scenes into works of art.
• I am grateful for color that makes my heart leap as nature displays itself as a master colorist.
• I am grateful for my fellow walkers enjoying the beauty of the day.

Arkansas ice storm 2009

I wasn’t particularly grateful when I took this photo as it destroyed so many beautiful trees and shut power down for ten days. However, when I looked at it later, I was grateful the beauty and the memory.

My gratitudes:

• I am grateful for the frozen beauty of the morning glistening against the passing ice storm.
• I am grateful for trees hardy enough to withstand Nature’s icy fingers.
• I am grateful that I had time to enjoy the beauty of the Bradford pear trees which lined our driveway before they were lost to this ferocious ice storm.
• I am grateful to have a warm place to sleep even when the weather is treacherous.
• I am grateful that I had family who took us in when our power went out for ten days.

Maggi on Thanksgiving at Costco

This is Maggi, my dancing inspiration spirit guide. In search of indulgence with a non-vegan pie after a long day of trying to be “good,” we headed off to a mostly empty Costco where she terrorized the few shoppers in the store and cackled all the way. It’s an especially sweet memory since she died a few months later.

My gratitudes:

• I’m so grateful we got to spend Thanksgiving together.
• I am grateful that Maggi was part of my life.
• I am grateful for friends who always make me laugh.
• I am grateful for friends who expand my Universe and add to my wisdom.
• I am grateful for Maggi who taught me how to meet death, still laughing all the way.

Click here.

As I’ve put these together, I’ve decided to create a personal photo book to be called My Gratitudes, Volume 1. If you decide to try this, please leave a comment below.

Saunter into the world

Suggestion from Gratitude Miracles journal*, Cycle 8: Peace & Contentment:

Mick Ukleja at LeadershipTraq.com suggests that you "Saunter into your day.  The word saunter comes from the Middle Ages. Everything was considered sainted, including the earth - St. Terre. Therefore, to saunter is to walk on the earth with reverence for its holiness."

Take time to enter your day slowly and with reverence.

*Gratitude Miracles journal is available at amazon.com

Click here.

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Ordinary miracles and living in creative space

Bullishly Blue - International art connections - see below

2016: Since I started working with the Gratitude Miracles journal, I’ve become more aware of ordinary miracles. I note them in the journal and every week a few turn up. Most of them have indeed been ordinary even though unexpected and delightful … a visit with a friend, a new idea or opportunity, a kind comment. 

None of them have been more ordinary than the chair I bought earlier this week at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. My last move left me without a comfy chair. I thought I could make do with the couch. I thought that for a year and a half before deciding I truly needed a good chair, a recliner. It had a few constraints: cloth not leather, small enough for me to lift it, plain color - blue or wine, and in reasonably good condition.

 

I’ve been checking Craigslist and local thrift stores, becoming more and more discouraged, to the point where I wondered if I would have to buy something new. So, it was a surprise when I found the almost perfect chair, at a thrift store that I almost never go to, and also on sale. I didn’t even count this chair as a miracle. It was just something I wanted and finally found.

The miracle happened when I moved the furniture around in the living room to make way for the new chair. Something happened. It’s like the room woke up and said, “Ta da!” 

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a designer living room. It’s a motley assortment of mis-matched items from various thrift stores since I sold all my furniture before my last move. But, when all the pieces were back in place, … I don’t know how else to say it … it turned into sacred space. It made my heart sing. It made me think of the space and all the surfaces in it as altars … altars to spirit, to creativity, to life.

Several years ago, I saw the movie, Words and Pictures, about two high school teachers: one art, one English. The art teacher suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and lives in her studio. The movie is good, but I was captivated by the idea of living in an art studio. Of course, my art is digital so it wouldn’t have all the wonderful paints and brushes and canvases and so on that make a painter’s studio so wonderful. My art studio would look more like living in an iMac.

Now, however, I feel like I am living in a studio. It is alive with art and color and books and the projects I’m working on. I’ve spent the last couple of days cleaning and rearranging, honoring the space as sacred, honoring the miracle of creativity and life, honoring the dance of gratitude and miracles. 

International Art Connection:  Somewhere in San Miguel de Allende, there is a wall artist who painted this picture ... the bull, not the cars

I think we must be kindred spirits. This bull spoke to me, invited me to play. Today, sitting in my new space, my new studio, we did, indeed, play.

Click here

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even

 deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Daily Gratitude: Music & Poetry

Hot Harmonica on a Cool Night

Day 23/365: I am grateful for music that adds to the joy of life, excites us, soothes us, makes us dance, takes us to other lands.

One night in the Sierra foothills, people gathered under the stars, listening to this musician play a hot harmonica on that cool evening.

Arthur O'Shaughnessy's "Ode," is one of my favorites and the best known work of this British poet and herpetologist(!). He died too young after getting a chill walking home from the theater on a rainy night.


 Other thoughts on music:

"Where words fail, music speaks."
-- Hans Christian Anderson

“Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.”
― Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche


Here's the full version of "Ode."

WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,	5
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,	10
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure	15
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;	20
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth. Click here. Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude.  Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Daily Gratitude: Research

Day 22/365: I am grateful for the research being done that shows that practicing gratitude creates benefits in almost every aspect of life.

Steven Salt posts an interest article that introduced me to the term "thanks-living" and offers this snippet:

Mary Baker Eddy once asked a thought-provoking question, "Are we really grateful for the good already received?"  She added, "Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessing we have, and thus be fitted to receive more." Counting our blessings instead of inventorying our troubles is sage advice that promotes added benefits.

Click here for the full article.

Daily Gratitude: Learning

Day 21/365: I am so grateful for the abundance of learning resources available to us in today's world. In addition to books and libraries, we have the Internet, made useful by Google, Wikipedia, a multitude of online university courses, and millions of websites created by subject matter experts (and non-experts, of course).

The Internet is our version of the Royal Library of Alexandria with its hundreds of thousands of scrolls. We have the extremely good fortune, though, to have all this information at our fingertips, largely free, and available to almost everyone.

We have unlimited choices in what we choose to learn. May it lead us toward being a kinder, smarter, more peaceful species.

More thoughts on learning:

"Still I am learning."
 -- Michelangelo, on his death bed

"Learning without reflection is a waste.
Refection without learning is dangerous."
-- Confucius

"Learning is perhaps the only pleasure that might replace increasing consumption as our chosen mode of enriching experience. 

Some day, the joy of recognizing a pattern in a leaf or the geological strata in a cliff face might replace the satisfactions of new carpeting or more horsepower in an engine, and the chance to learn in the workplace might seem more valuable than increased purchasing power or a move up the organizational chart."
 -- Mary C. Bateson, from Peripheral Vision

Journal Giveaway - to Friends

Goodreads just completed a giveaway of Gratitude Miracles.

It was a great experience. 853 people entered the giveaway ... unfortunately, none of my friends won. ;-(

Fortunately, I've made some new friends. ;-)

Anyway, I'm going to do another giveaway of 5 copies of the journal.

Remember *practicing* gratitude benefits almost every aspect of life ... from health, relationships, happiness, success, creativity and almost everything else.  See the benefits listed in the right column for more details.

Here's how to get in the drawing: Two simple steps!

1. Leave a comment below indicating something you're grateful for.
2. Click here and LIKE the Gratitude Miracles Journal Facebook page.

 Winners will be chosen using a random number generator and notified by a Facebook private message. (BTW, if you already have a copy, feel free to enter ... you can give it away to a friend.)

And, for all my friends outside the US and Canada ... unfortunately the cost of international shipping is prohibitive, so until I can figure out a way to do this electronically, I'm afraid you can't play. 

Giveaway is now closed - delighted to send a journal to Ed Gillum.

 

New Beginnings To Do List

Quiet Moment

To Do List: 

Mend a quarrel.

Seek out a forgotten friend.

Dismiss suspicion, and replace it with trust.

Write a love letter.

Share some treasure.

Give a soft answer.

Offer encouragement.

Manifest your loyalty in word and deed.

Keep a promise.

Find the time.

Forgive an enemy.

Listen.

Apologize if you are wrong.

Try to understand.

Flout envy.

Examine your demands on others.

Think first of someone else.

Appreciate.

Be kind; be gentle.

Laugh a little.Laugh a little more.

Deserve confidence.

Take up arms against malice.

Decry complacency.

Express your gratitude.

Welcome a stranger.

Gladden the heart of a child.

Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth.

Speak your love.

Speak it again.

Speak it still once again.

 --Reverend Lee Reid Nov-Dec 1996 Newsletter, 

Unitarian Universalist Society of the Palisades

This was shared by Amy Taylor who says, "Reverend Reid was a woman who lived peace.  She died unexpectedly in  a car accident several years ago, and a collection of her writings was published posthumously in her honor - Saints and Souls. This list is from that book.

Daily Gratitude: Reflection

This morning starts a new cycle of gratitude focused on energy.

Day 20/365: Reflection

However, first I get to reflect on the past cycle which focused on success. It is said that reflection is the key to learning. For me, reflection is another form of gratitude, a reinforcing of the gratitudes I’ve already acknowledged.

At the end of each four week cycle, the Gratitude Miracles journal asks us to think about what was learned, what was surprising, and what wants to be changed.

As I look back and reflect on the past four weeks of gratitudes, I can see patterns and growth, as well as paths leading in new directions. I also see the continuing dance between two poles: the desire for community and connection and the love of solitude and contemplation. At the present moment, my life leans toward solitude and I feel the pull toward community. As I enter the next cycle, I want to connect more, have more conversations with fascinating people who are following their passion.

 

In the past four weeks, I recorded 19 miracles, some tiny, some truly significant. Without this pause for reflection, though, I would have rushed into the next moment without truly savoring the gifts that have already been given to me. I am so grateful for this process that slows me down long enough check in with myself, to make sure I’m leading the life I want to lead.

I am falling in love with creating gratitude “memes,” such as the one above and want to continue putting quotes together with my photography and art.

More thoughts on reflection:

Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh offers this --

Whatever you are reflecting on, the following points are important:

Reflection is an exploration and explanation of events – not just a description.

Reflection often involves revealing anxieties, errors and weaknesses, as well as strengths and successes.

It is usually necessary to select just the most significant parts of the event or idea on which you’re reflecting. Don’t try to tell the whole story, or you will end up only describing rather than reflecting.

It is often useful to reflect forward to the future – when you might do something differently as a result of reflecting – as well as reflecting back on the past.

*****

At the end of each class at Gateway Community College in Phoenix, students are asked to reflect on what they’ve learned. The website offers these words on reflection.

Reflection, or thinking about our experiences, is the key to learning. Reflection allows us to analyze our experiences, make changes based on our mistakes, keep doing what is successful, and build upon or modify past knowledge based on new knowledge. Reflection also allows us to make connections between courses or between school, work and home. By doing this, we begin to see how all parts of our lives are connected and to understand that we are a part of the web of life.

Daily Gratitude: Challenge

Day 17/365: I am grateful for the challenges that take me out of my comfort zone, stretch me in new directions, make me try things that I might not otherwise try, and give me confidence when I meet the challenge successfully.


More thoughts about challenge:

"Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth...
Tame the dragon and the gift is yours."
-- Noela Evans




"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."
-- Joshua J. Marine

"That we are either moving toward life or away from it is the heart of the human drama. To stand up and fight through the conflicts, confrontations, and disappointments we all encounter is the heroic challenge."
-- Dara Marks, Inside Story

 

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Daily Gratitude: Poetry

Day 16/365: I am grateful for poetry and the almost magical way words and meaning flow together into a stream that takes you to unexpected places.

More thoughts on poetry:

"Poetry is the voice of the soul." 
 -- Carolyn Forche

Poetry is like "dancing on dynamite."
-- Hart Crane

"Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom."
  -- Robert Frost

"If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know *that* is poetry.  

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know *that* is poetry.  These are the only ways I know.  Is there any other way?"
-- Emily Dickinson

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Daily Gratitude: Beauty

Day 15/365: I am grateful for beauty in all its many forms: art, nature, loving faces, movement of the human body or an angry sea, steam rising from a cup of tea.

More thoughts on beauty:

"Beauty is not a luxury, nor an art. 
It is the soul's breath of life." 
 -- Joyce Wycoff

"Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul." 
-- Alice Walker

“What can we say beyond Wow, in the presence of glorious art, in music so magnificent that it can't have originated solely on this side of things? Wonder takes our breath away, and makes room for new breath.”
― Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

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Daily Gratitude: Sight

Day 14/365: I am grateful for sight, being able to see the faces of people I care about, the vibrant colors of flowers, sunshine lighting up the leaves in the morning, words on the page that turn into stories that entertain me or information that enlightens me.

"Sunlight doesn’t just hit you. When you open the window, the sunlight hits everything in your house.

When you open the window of learning, you don’t learn just the specific thing you are trying to see. You begin to see everything that is now lit.

The real art is paying attention to all of the things you can now see. 
Now that the sunlight is pouring in."
--James Altucher, entrepreneur, investor and best-selling author of “Choose Yourself” and “Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth”

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower 
Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.”
--William Blake

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Daily Gratitude: Words

Day 12/365: How grateful I am for words. Words that I read, words I write, words that pass back and forth between friends, family, neighbors and nations.

More thoughts on words:

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."       
  --Mother Teresa

“Words are events, they do things, change things.”
-- Ursula K. Le Guin

"Mere air, these words, but delicious to hear." -- words found on a Grecian cup, attributed to the Greek poet Sappho.poem, poetry.

"The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words."
-- William Gass

“Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

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Daily Gratitude: Wonder

Day 11/365: I am so grateful to live in a wonder-filled Universe that keeps me in a child-like state of awe and appreciation.

"We are all born with a sense of wonder.
Wonder and awe allow us to transcend the ordinary.
 
Wonder inspires us to open our hearts and our minds to engender gratitude."
-- Louis Schwartzberg

Being Grateful for All the Things Climate Change Can't Change

Monster storms, rising waters, methane laced sink holes. ... It's easy to be terrified, to feel powerless, to abandon hope.

Indigenous people and Australian kayakers protest coal.

Josh Fox, documentary maker of award-winning Gasland fame (a must see if you have any questions about the fracking or the value of natural gas), has a new documentary that asks us to reframe the question from "What can we do?" to "What are we so grateful for that we will do whatever we can to save it?"

Fox asks, "What are the things that climate change cannot destroy? What are those parts of us that are so deep that no storm can take them away?"

The documentary shows Pacific Islanders (who are already losing villages to the rising seas) shouting "We are not drowning; we are fighting!" as they head out in their hand-carved canoes to join the blockade of one of the world's largest coal ports in Australia. Click here to watch the clip about this documentary. 

Click here to view the official trailer.

 The documentary is available from iTunes for $9.99.








Click here to read more about this protest.

Daily Gratitude: Wisdom

Day 10/365: I am grateful to be a minnow swimming in the river of wisdom.

Daily Gratitude: Grass Valley

Day 9/365: I am so grateful to be able to live in a place of great natural beauty and an abundance of beauty, music, art and friendly, engaged people. Life is good.

"I know for sure that appreciating whatever shows up for you in life changes your personal vibration. You radiate and generate more goodness for yourself when you're aware of all you have and not focusing on your have-nots."
-- Oprah Winfrey

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Gratitude Miracles

by Joyce Wycoff

Giveaway ends September 24, 2016.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

World Gratitude Day Challenge - Celebrate Miracles

"The miracle is not to walk on water.  

The miracle is to walk on the green earth 

in the present moment, 

to appreciate the peace and beauty 

that are available now."  
  -- Thich Nhat Hanh  

Gratitude is good for you.

Recent studies prove that being grateful has a beneficial effect on happiness, health and fitness, relationships, success, energy and many other aspects of a vibrant life. There's even a close relationship to "miracles." (See definition below.)

World Gratitude Day, September 21, was officially started by the United Nations Meditation Group in 1977. It was created to encourage people to celebrate:

• Life in all its many forms
• Family, friends, neighbors, co-workers
• Opportunities, experiences, adventures
• Personal skills, talents, successes and failures
• The beauty around us, natural and man-made
• The things that make life safer, easier, more fun

To honor this day, we're going to see how many miracles we can create before World Gratitude Day. We're defining miracles not as walking on water or winning the lottery but as those unexpected delights that make you smile and say "Wow!"

     The World Gratitude Day 
Create Miracles Now -

Celebrate Miracles on September 21st

Start now to think about what you are truly grateful for. Studies show that rather than just making a list of things you’re grateful for, it is more beneficial to think and write about ONE thing at a time, listing 3-5 reasons why you’re grateful for that one thing.

Since gratitude and miracles are closely related, let's pay close attention to the miracles that show up in your life. The more we pay attention to them, the more they seem to multiply. How many will show up in our lives?

To create your miracles, you can grab a Gratitude Miracles journal at amazon.com … or you can simply record your gratitudes in any journal … or on little slips of paper you put into a gratitude jar. Do it your way! 

Pay close attention to the miracles

and share them in the comments section below.  

 First be grateful,

Then watch for miracles. 

Invite your friends and family ...

the more miracles, the merrier!

Note: The one thing per day format is used in Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! It also gives you quotes, prompts and simple tasks to help you recognize gratitude all around you. 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Gratitude Miracles

by Joyce Wycoff

Giveaway ends September 24, 2016.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Daily Gratitude: Gift of Art

Day 8/365 - I am so grateful for photography and Photoshop that allows me to play with images in a way that sometimes takes my breath away.

Originally a piece of a burned shed in Harmony, CA, this image morphed into an image titled "Into the Mystery."

An opportunity to talk about about the Gratitude Miracles journal pushed it into the field of gratitude and this morning it continued its journey into a new incarnation called "Pieces of Peace" which I hope will be accepted by Pacifica Graduate Institute as part of their Pondering Peace celebration early next month.