Lovely Gratitude – July 2019 Gratitude Challenge

Welcome back to my gratitude challenge. It’s that time of the month again where I issue a gratitude challenge for myself and hopefully a few others of you to complete too. So far the challenges have included writing 100 things that you’re grateful for, going 24 hours without complaining and four weeks of photos of things you are grateful for in your life, promoting self love, self care and meditation.

If you’re new to the challenge, but still want to join in there’s still still, please come and join in and embrace the gratitude! To take part, just join in it’s a simple as that. You can start from the beginning if you would like or start from this month. If you want to share with me how it’s going I have a hashtag to use on social media #LovelyGratitude2019.

June’s Gratitude Challenge

June’s gratitude challenge was focused on meditation, did you take part?

It is something I wrote about on the blog last week on how it is helping me with my anxiety. If this is something that you struggle with day to day, I’d really recommend that you try it. But it is also proven to help with stress, depression and increase mindfulness too so there is definitely lots of reasons for giving it a try.

This month, I have also managed to complete April’s self love challenge which I failed at the first time around. I simply added an extra task to my daily gratitude challenge challenge and as well as writing three things I am grateful for, I have added in an extra line to write something I am happy with my body about for that day. It’s really varied from – I’m glad it can breastfeed my babies, to how far it can walk and feeling confident one day in a particular outfit.

July’s Gratitude Challenge

July’s challenge is about changing your mindset towards gratitude everyday. I’m not talking about a journal, which was January’s challenge and something I still do every day and is definitely think is a great tool. This is about turning your mindset around when you get into a negative place.

Gratitude is a Choice We Make – Angeles Amien

I think this quote really does describe the ethos of gratitude and how to improve your mindset. We can choose to be grateful or ungrateful.

So for July’s gratitude challenge I am going to talk about the pause button. Of course, you cannot pause life as much as you might want to sometimes. But pausing for a moment when the going gets tough.

This is something I want to focus on more, to stop myself being negative or grumpy as it’s just not a nice way to live really. So my aim is to try and do this more and more, but it is definitely something that helps me when I am at home alone with my children. But, I imagine it will work very well in other situations such as work too. So here it is:

3 Steps

1. Remember nothing lasts forever. A situation might feel all consuming in one moment and then 10 minutes later more manageable. Take a moment out if you can- this depends on your situation – but leave the room, change your area of focus, do some meditative breathing. Anything to just take a break from negative thought processes and take a mini moment from the intensity that you might be struggling with.
2. Look at what you are grateful for in the situation you are in. For example your children, a good job, a new challenge, people that care for you. Focus on this emotion rather than the negative.
3. Give back the gratitude – change the story to find a way to give back the gratitude and find the good in a situation. Make a person involved a cup of tea, give your child a hug or spend some extra reading time with them at bedtime, water your neighbours plants. Something that gives just a little back and is about sharing the love and encouraging your caring side.

Give it a go and let me know if it helps and I will report back at the end of the month if it’s helped me.

As always, I would love to hear how you are getting on. Also please do check my Instagram stories as I do keep you updated as to how I’m doing on there. Please do let me know on my Facebook page, or Twitter or Instagram, whichever works for you.

The next challenge goes live on the 5th August, hopefully see you there!