I started this journey about a month ago, and I have to admit I was the biggest skeptic of all. It was a journey of the physical body, which was trying to reach a connection with the soul. It was a journey of saying goodbye to the old brain that had bouts of negativity and sadness and hello to a new mind that exuded light and positive energy. I had no clue what and if I even had a destination in mind, but I wanted to give it my best anyway.
I started the month with a gratitude journal. Every single day before I went to bed I wrote five things I was grateful for. They had to be something different each day; it was kind of a struggle in the beginning. As all mothers know, we are always most grateful for our children's health and safety. I challenged myself and decided to keep that as my "I am always grateful for that." Aside from that, I had to find five more things. I really had to push my brain, but eventually, it became, "I am thankful for being able to make someone laugh," or " I am thankful for being able to go for a walk and see a beautiful butterfly."
To people, maybe these were small things, but for me, I started to notice these small, tiny things. I forced myself to look for things to be grateful for, which allowed me to see goodness in almost everything. Honestly, however it has still been difficult. Days when I felt like everything was going wrong for me, it was so hard to write in the journal. For nine days out of 30, I wasn't able to find five things.
The next thing I did was visualization. I made a vision board and every morning and before going to sleep I sat on my bed with my eyes closed and thought about the things on my vision board. I imagined myself doing what I wanted to do, which was being appreciated for the love of my life -- writing. I started to drift off many times, but I would continue to meditate until I got it right. And yes, some of my visualization came true. I had so many people write to me, who had read my posts on the Huffington Post. The most amazing thing happened, I got an email from Arianna Huffington and she said she had enjoyed my post! Talk about dreams coming true.
The other thing that I did was, after my visualization every morning, I told myself, "Today was going to be the best day of my life," some days were so bad that I wanted to just stop; however, there were days that things started to happen or maybe I started to notice the good things. I started to write again, people enjoyed what I wrote, I went to a Lionel Richie concert, had my laser eye surgery done (I haven't been able to see with my own eyes for the past 30 some years) and some other small things.
Was the 30-day experiment successful? Was I able to change my mindset and be more positive? I would say around 40 percent, yes. Everything was the same but I had new eyes (literally and metaphorically), I could see that I was a happier person and I smiled more. I would enjoy things more, my anxiety about things is less and I believe I will conquer the world -- with the help of my writing!
I do plan to continue my journey for another 30 days. I will try to incorporate a few more things which I will share with you guys next week.