In June 2003 I started a daily discipline that has been a very powerful experience in my life. Each night before I go to bed I write in my Journal of Thanksgiving. I jot down a brief list of five things I am thankful for from that day. They can be about anything – spiritual, emotional, physical, relational.

I would not have thought doing this would be such a valuable experience, but it has been. It forces me each night to focus on the positive and best things that happened during the day and therefore allows me to end my day on a positive note. To be sure, some days it is harder than others to find positive things. I can think of at least one time where three of the five entries were “It’s time to go to bed.” But I was thankful that the day was over and I could go to bed and look forward to a new day when I woke up!

I’m on my second journal now. I chose this journal because I appreciated the poem on the inside cover. I thought it fit so well with the discipline of keeping a Journal of Thanksgiving.

The best things in life
are nearest:
Breath in your nostrils,
light in your eyes,
flowers at your feet,
duties at your hand,
the path of right just before you.

Then do not grasp at the stars,
but do life’s plain, common work
as it comes, certain that daily duties
and daily bread
are the sweetest things in life.
Robert Louis Stevenson