What I’m grateful for in December

• For watching a squirrel, outside my home.
• For watching Blue Tits and a Robin, outside my home.
• For cosey socks and fleecy blanket.
• For donating to charity.
• For peace and quiet.

What I’m grateful for in November

• The walk in my local park
• For a torch given to me
• For chocolate
• For hot drinks and hot dinners
• For appreciation received from friends
• For heating on cold nights
• For donating to charity
• For autumn colours
• For being me
• For accessibility at my new doctors

Blog post re-share: You Are Amazing

It’s so easy to overlook yourself and this post serves as a good reminder for us. 🙂

Letitgocoach

I’m truly enjoying the November Soul Reset.

Day Three is talking about gratitude, but not just the proverbial list. It asked me to thank myself.

To say ‘thank you’ to me for being me.

Consider the last time you felt thankful for yourself. Really genuinely. Not because someone told you to. But because it just dawned on you. It just dawned on you that you are pretty amazing. ~SC Lourie

This is rather profound. When I think back of all the things I’ve been through, I tend to thank God, and that someone who stood by me during the storm. I cannot recall if I’ve ever said, “Thank you Barb.” 

I encourage you to take a quiet moment with you. Sit with a warm cuppa, and thank you for being there for you. When you think of who you love most in this world let it be you. You…

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What I’m grateful for in October

What I’m grateful for, in October.

• For Nestle Whip (no more walnuts to take off)

• For the local library
• For hot chocolate
• For my Sharpie pens and pencil crayons
• For lunch bought by my mum
• For lunch with my cousin and uncle
• For help from a friend to move boxes and bags. Also for his help in cleaning a bit of my flat.
• For my mum ending up liking my flat and helping a little with cleaning.
• For a welcome and introduction, from a neighbour upstairs, prior to moving in.
• For the welcome and introduction from my neighbour below me.
• For both these two neighbours looking out for me.
• For upstairs neighbour who gave me his spare cold water inlet hose for my automatic washer
• For my landlord intervening, to get my gas sorted.

A to Z Gratitude Challenge

So near the end of the post, “Life is a rollercoaster” I talked about the “A to Z gratitude challenge” I came across in a book, in case you liked a go. The rules for this challenge, was to, as said from the book, on page 71 of “Courage, 50 Mindfulness and Relaxation Exercises to Improve Your Confidence,” by Dr. Arlene K. Unger:

“Write the alphabet on a sheet of paper. For each letter, challenge yourself to come up with something to be grateful for. (When you get to X and Z, just find something that contains those letters rather than words that start with them.)”

I mentioned that when I had done mine, I would share it in a separate post. So here it is.

A – Animals. As long as it is the furry, or feathered kind.

B – Books. There is always something nice to read, or learn from a book.

C – Cats. For the love received from cats once owned.

D – DVD’S. Action, or comedy.

E – Early mornings. I’m enjoying getting up an hour early, than normal.

F – Fruit. It makes me feel good.

G – Gratitude. For practising it more.

H – Hamster. For a little thing, it gave me lots of love, when I had one.

I – Ice cream. Whether it be a bowl of vanilla, or a Ben and Jerry’s. Naughty, but nice.

J – Jelly. Strawberry jelly, with vanilla ice cream and relive a childhood favourite.

K – For the kindness I have received.

L – Lavender. A relaxing fragrance.

M – Music, to reflect my mood; whether to relax, or dance.

N – Nature. Nothing beats getting out and taking a walk, whether the park, visiting a pond, the beach, smelling that flower, or watching wildlife. I just love it.

O – Oranges. I know I said fruit, but there is something about oranges that can perk me up, or just be refreshing.

P – Perfume. I find some perfumes can be relaxing. It’s lovely to find an alternative that can.

Q – Quiet. I like my quiet times, as they help me recharge.

R – Roof. For a roof, over my head.

S – Sanctuary. My home is my sanctuary, just to be me in how I choose. To take my hearing aids out, if I want to.

T – Tea. Nothing beats a mug of tea, throughout the day.

U – Unique. For being me.

V – Vets. For the support in the final days of Miley, my beautiful cat.

W – WordPress. My blog and the lovely community I have discovered here.

X – I can’t think of one.

Y – Yellow. A cheerful colour, that always feels like sunshine, no matter what the weather.

Z – Zzz. Sleep, as it helps me, mentally.

Have you been having a go with this challenge?

Life is a rollercoaster

I’m sure like me, you have heard the phrase “life is like a rollercoaster.” This past year, I feel I can use this phrase. Lots of things have happened, that have been good and bad. I have had to give myself extra self-care more than normal, which for a while has been on a daily basis. After my emotional week recently, that I talked about in this post; “Feeling emotional,” I have had to make sure I do keep giving myself self-care, appropriate for the situation.
Some self-care I have been doing is spending lots of time at the library this week. This will continue into next week on free days I will have, prior to work. I am out of internet as well, until the 4th October, so I am taking advantage of their WiFi too.
Some days have been colouring, or doodling, as I recently shared in a post.
At work, before work starts, I sit in a place away from others on odd days, for some quiet.

Anxiety has creeped in the last couple of days, but I feel I have it under control with slow deep breaths, touching things that help me relax and drinking tea, or hot chocolate.

This morning, while at the library, I chose to quickly flick through a book that caught my eye. The book was called, “Courage, 50 Mindfulness and Relaxation Exercises to Improve Your Confidence,” by Dr. Arlene K. Unger. Flicking through the book I see I am either doing some of these things already, or something I plan to do next.
But there was one thing that caught my eye in particular. I thought I would share it here with you, because I know there are readers like me that write either on their blog, or in a journal what they are grateful for the day and I thought you might be interested. I see it as something we could all give a go at, whether you practice gratitude, or not.
Would you like a challenge? Then keep reading.

This excerpt is from page 71, of the book:

“Write the alphabet on a sheet of paper. For each letter, challenge yourself to come up with something to be grateful for. (When you get to X and Z, just find something that contains those letters rather than words that start with them.)”

So are you going to have a go, with this challenge?

If you do, then when you have a go, either write yours for in a comment in this post.
Or if you are going to write this challenge up on your own blog, then tag this actual post.
Please , if you do tag me, that you make sure you tag using this post and not the whole of my blog, because that way I won’t miss your post. (Realistically, I shouldn’t.) Past challenges where I have found people to have joined in have not tagged me this way and I only happened to have spotted that they had joined in because I was scrolling in my reader far enough. I could have so easily missed.

I will share mine, once I have done it, in a separate post.

“What do you want for Christmas?”

I know, I know, I am discussing Christmas before even the decorations appear in the shop. I feel for you, I do. I am also one that cusses when the Christmas decorations appear in the shop before Halloween has even happened. But you know what? shops are not the earliest people to prepare, because I am and maybe I will discover there are readers too.

I start getting the odd Christmas present early in the year, so that getting one here and there instead of all in one go, means hopefully, I should not feel it in my pocket. I also beat the Christmas rush that everyone else likes to do. But this year has been a little delay in parts with what has happened in my life, so I have been a little panicky about whether I will do it. I think I will though, but that is least of my worries, with the distraction I will have in October.

Also, my mum is always be on the ball, July time, asking me, “What do you want for Christmas?” and I have to say my eyes roll, because I dread this question sometimes, because I am someone who feels they have what they want. I can’t always think what I want.

But after some thought these last two months, I know I don’t want to own things that will cause clutter, this is things like ornaments, picture frames, other nik naks.
But if it’s something I can use, like for example, perfume, clothing, decaf tea, flavoured teas I have been trying, decaf coffee, biscuits, notebooks, A4 paper, pens, pencil crayons, these simple things will keep me happy.
I remembered last year when a friend appreciated his coffee and tea at Christmas and it got me thinking that yes, I would be happy with that. It’s getting used. It’s a simple idea for a person who has everything they feel they need.

Are you like me when it comes to Christmas? Are you realising that simple things we use would be fine at Christmas? Any other comments, do share.