blessings book.

I got an email a few weeks ago from a fellow blogger asking me if I would mind sending her a list of my ten favorite things to be included on her blog. I was more than happy to, and decided that at the risk of sounding slightly redundant, I'd write out a few of the things that make me the happiest today:

Reading under the covers early in the morning.Books so clever they make me wish I was that way too.

Cherry chapstick. That smell makes me want to fall over or fall in love. I love it.

Muddy buddies and Jack Sprat toast for breakfast. Judge away.

Vacuum lines in the carpet. I would vacuum every morning just for those lines if the people who lived below me wouldn't be annoyed to death. They already stopped me in the elevator once just to tell me that my apartment must be very clean from all the vacuuming that goes on. Ha, if they only knew.

The smell of summertime.

Texting my mom, dad and sister - all at the same time, all about different things, but all ending in I love you's.


About a year ago, I read a talk given by President Henry B. Eyring that suggested writing down your blessings every single night before going to bed. It's kind of like a journal, but now I just refer to it as my blessings book. I don't want to stand on a soap box, but I'm going to anyway for only just a second.

Ahem.

I cannot even begin to express how much has changed just by simply writing down a blessing, or even something small that made me happy over the past 14 months. I don't want to exaggerate the point, but there is no other way of putting it: it changed my life. If I could find even the smallest thing on the worst day that somehow made me recognize the good, I started to look for it more and more. I started to recognize it more and more. And so even when I felt like throwing myself in front of a bus (because lets be honest, some days you just feel like that) I'd still find something to be grateful for that night while writing it down in this book.

And to be fair... sometimes I was lame and would write something like: water, (ha) for what would have been lack of enthusiasm, or it was just really late at night, but I swear to you - even writing water made me feel great. And now I notice those great days come most of the time, rather than less of it.

And who knows, one day this might all be a huge secret to success.
Maybe.


But that's all I got for now. Off the soap box.