The Magic Gratitude Box

This year, my theme is "Simplify & Systemize."

I have bigger goals and more things that I want to accomplish than ever before...but here's the thing -

I don't believe that I need to be busier than ever before.

I just need to get a few things right and I'll have the power of the Slight Edge working for me.

So today, I'm sharing a little end of the day routine that helps me keep my mindset focused on what's going right, not on what's going "wrong."  I feel that unless you are able to cultivate the awareness of how much you've done and how far you've come already, than you're going to get hung up on the negative emotion of stressing over how far you have yet to go and this will sabotage your progress.

Nothing kills success more than the "start-stop-start-stop" emotional roller coaster of inconsistent activity.

Keep your emotional stability and forward motion by focusing on everything that is going right in your life, all the opportunities that are already in front of you, and the progress that you've already been making.

In other word's, keep your mindset straight and on the bright side.

Be grateful and you'll get more stuff to be grateful for.

Focus on what you think you lack and you will create more lack.

If you want to try out my technique for keeping track of gratitude, here is what you need:

1. Index cards

2. Tape or glue

3. This printable From the All Things Bright and Beautiful blog

4. A small box to hold the index cards

This picture explains how it should look when you're done putting your gratitude box together.

Cool, right?

So at the end of the day, while my "To Do" list might not be completely checked off with all the things I wanted to do, my "What Went Right Today" index cards are full of all the day's activities, accomplishments, and opportunities that happened whether or not I wrote them down on my To Do list.

You can't always make things happen. Sometimes you got to let things happen and then capitalize on those things.

So many opportunities come into our lives and pass unnoticed because we don't have the awareness to look at solutions because we're giving all of our attention to the problem.  

And you know what? All we have are the little opportunities. Big opportunities are only the result of have been faithful to taking advantage of the seemingly humdrum, minuscule opportunities of each day. 

The magic of this system is that it helps me make my Weekly Review. I'm able to review the cards for the previous week and write out my game plan for the oncoming week based on opportunities that happened last week.

For example:

last week:

-bumped into old customer today

this week:

-call customer and ask her if she'd like to order again

last week:

-discovered really awesome blog with similar values

this week:

-look into advertising on that blog for one month

Planning this way feels like

I'm rolling a ball that is already rolling.

(Versus feeling like I'm pushing a boulder up a mountain all the time. Haha.)

I don't always feel like taking the time to do this at the end of the day, and neither will you probably. But I remember that it only takes a minute and saves me an unimaginable amount of time that would be wasted in trying to figure out what the heck to do next to move forward.

You don't need to wait for opportunity. Opportunity is staring you in the face. Opportunity is waiting for you.

Just click on the poster of tabs and it will take you to where you can print them out.  The credit for this printable goes to "All Things Bright and Beautiful."

Get crackin'!