At a feast a few years ago, one of the ministers mentioned that he kept a regular journal and would indicate whether the entry was a positive or negative . I had been keeping a journal but tended only to write when something negative happened or something was bothering me. Hearing this idea gave me the thought to be more balanced and use it to give a fair assessment of my days. So now I prefix my entries with "Good" or "Bad".
Examples of what I would prefix with "Good" are: I meet someone that had some information I needed; an article is on pcog.org that provides help with an issue that I prayed about; I land a bargain at the store; I am able to help someone. Here are some of the things I noticed from doing this:
- It's easy to focus on and remember the bad things that happen, it takes more effort to recall the good things.
- I try to write the good things as soon as possible (I keep a digital journal) as I have found that if I wait until the end of the day it's so easy to forget the many little good things that happened (how short the memory is).
- By doing this I have found that I can monitor my life and see trends. If a lot of "bads" are showing up it makes me take stock of my life to see why.
- It enhances my prayers because I am able to thank God in detail for more of the big and small blessings he gives.
- Sometimes, something that I thought was negative actually turns out to be a positive and it's great to go back and edit that entry and note how things worked out. It makes me see truth in "all things work together for good".
- It puts life in perspective to see it in black and white as I said before the negative gets exacerbated in our minds over the good. I have truly seen how there is much more positive things that happen in reality.
Give this a try yourself even just for a week. You may be surprised by how much more aware and thankful you become of the good stuff that goes on in your life and also catch yourself when there are things you need to work on before they get out of hand.
