Sometimes the tools that inspire and keep us going are also the easiest to implement..if we do it.

For years friends told me to keep a gratitude journal. But I was always too busy, too tired, too anything that was the excuse of the day. In the wake of my year of loss i started with just one line. Just the date and a note that I was grateful for chocolate milk. Yup, chocolate milk. Then a few days later, my toes... and the fact that I could walk when others couldn't.  I don’t manage to open my journal every day, but the days I do my list of simple gratitudes makes me smile even on down days.

I believe the act of putting pencil to paper is part of the miracle of the gratitude journal. It activates that creative part of our brain, soaking up the source behind our toes and chocolate milk that it's in the simple things that our happiness lies. Not in big houses and Mercedes, but in the fact that each morning we still wake up and walk on grass instead of being buried under it.