iGraceDaily

Grtitude Journal

Are you felling symptoms of depression? How often do you have  symptoms of depression? I think we all feel these symptoms at some time or another.  (I want to be clear that I am not talking about clinical depression. Clinical depression is a very serious sickness and needs to be treated by professionals.)

What I am talking about here are symptoms which cause us to experience a temporary feeling of being “let down”, “lack of energy”, or unreasonably negative thoughts . For me these manifest themselves at certain times of the year more than others, and the New Year is one time of year when I find it easy to start feeling depressed.

Depression symptoms feel like “loss” to me, like something has been “taken away” or “subtracted” from my life. It may be that another year of living has now gone away and is lost forever, or I missed some type of opportunity to do something I should have done and now that opportunity is gone. It may be I have lost some form of core value. For instance, I have a core desire to be more self reliant in my approach to life. If I failed to make a decision to make a self reliant change in my life, I missed an great opportunity to move me toward my goal.

In my last post I mentioned that I was experiencing a general feeling of being let down and low energy.

I have also written about maintaining a Gratitude Spiritual Practice in previous posts, and here was my chance to follow my own advise.

I wanted to share with you how a Gratitude Journal became my prescription to temporary feelings of depression. When I wrote my last post (1-04-2010) I was feeling really depressed. I had made a commitment to start my gratitude journal on that day and  I entered a reoccurring  event in my calendar to write 5 things that I am grateful for each day.

So today, 4 days and 20 grateful listings later, I can say that I don’t have any feeling of depression or loss. It is simply impossible to maintain a gratitude journal and continue to feel depressed. With each entry, my thoughts of gratefulness off set any feelings of loss.  How can I think I am in a place of “loss” when I have some many great things in my life which bring me joy.

So I am challenging each of you to start your “Gratitude Prescription” and write 5 things a day that you are grateful for. You will feel better, have more energy, have a general sense of well being and feel a closer connection to Grace.