Changing My Mind

I have always been a pretty negative person. I'm not sure if I was wired this way or if it is a learned attitude but this year I am going to actively change my mindset.

Now you may be wondering how I intend to do that. Well let me tell you a little story.

I used to have a brother, he and I were pretty close and as we grew older we grew closer. It got to where we would talk regularly and our talks were always brutally honest and raw; but we both came at each other with love and good intentions so they were not hurtful conversations. It was in one of these open honest conversations that I told him about my struggle with depression and how hard it is for me to see the good in people and in situations.

Now if you need professional help then you should definitely seek it out, I did. I'm not saying to do this instead. However, I have used my brothers advice off and on for years now, mostly as a coping mechanism since his death, and so far I have found it helpful.

What he told me was this; not only had he experienced the same struggle but he had found it helpful to keep a gratitude journal so that on the hard days he could look back through his journal and it would lift his spirits.

This news surprised me. Not only was my brother was always upbeat but as far as I knew he never was a writer or even one to keep a journal. For that matter I don't journal either. So to say that the idea was met with enthusiasm and joy would be a flat out lie. I didn't like the idea at all. I hate to journal, it's hard and it takes up time. Time that I didn't have and didn't want to make. So at first I didn't take his advice.

Time is a funny thing though. It has a tendency to slowly change your mind sometimes. Death on the other hand, can change your mind rather quickly.

As I said earlier, my brother died, and as it happened this advice was part of the last conversation that I would ever have with him. After he died I spiraled down. I had never been on this planet without my brother and I had no idea how to start now. I didn't want to. I also had no choice. I thought a lot about our last conversation and how he he recommended I keep a journal. Suddenly I found time to try it.

I'm not good at starting new habits and this was no different, but what I'm really bad at is keeping them going once I do start. I will say that though I haven't stuck with a gratitude journal long I have done it enough to know how helpful it can be. I've also done it enough to realize that my brother didn't tell me the whole story. What he left out is this; keeping a gratitude journal can change you. As you keep track of things to be grateful for you sometimes have to actively look for things to add to your journal.

Actively looking for things to be grateful for has slowly started to change my mindset to make me a more grateful, and yes even positive person, more like the person that I want to be. It has changed me enough so far that I can now see beauty in the messy house, made by happy crazy tiny humans. Instead of focusing on the amount of work ahead of me I can see the joy that created the mess.

As I look back on the disaster that was 2020 I can't help but see the beauty that it encompassed as well. The love and closeness it brought to my family even, and especially, in quarantine. I don't believe that 2021 will be much better then the previous year but I intend to keep a gratitude journal for the entire year and I am looking forward to changing my mind.