Cultivating a lifestyle of gratitude has been a life changing practice for me. Even when I am at my lowest, it helps me to realize that I have so many more things to be grateful for than to mourn. When my patience is gone and my temper has snapped, choosing to focus on gratitude as what brings me back to shore. When the overwhelming news of the world we live in brings me to a place of fear, gratitude is what draws me out of that dark room.

Life is not predictable. Good behavior does not equal good outcomes. It can be cruelly unfair so often. And yet, at the same time, so mind-shatteringly beautiful. If we let the injustice of this world overshadow those ephemeral moments of beauty, we lose the miracle in the storyline. If we don’t let ourselves be captivated by instances of joy, peals of heartfelt laughter, or moments of true connection with one another, we lose the beauty in this life. 

But these small miracles go unnoticed unless we make a careful discipline of marking them. It’s a muscle that needs building, gratitude is. It starts by simply noticing. Then we grow to hunt for them, then we dig our toes in and fully embody these small daily moments of transcendence.

Start a list today. Make a goal of finding 100 things, big and small that you are grateful for. Then, build your list further. How many blessings can you find? The smell of freshly baked bread, the new shoots springing up from a plant in the pot on your windowsill, the sound of your neighbors enjoying family dinner on the back deck… how many can you observe over the course of a week, a month? How long before these moments of noticing begin to change who you are at your core and how you view the world?