Finding Hope and Joy in Your Life
“When darkness seems overwhelming, light a candle in someone’s life and see how it makes the darkness in your own and the other person’s life flee.”
Rabbi Harold S. Kujshner, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”
I serve on the National Advisory Council for Guideposts, and this was an excerpt from Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s booklet, “Hope: Opens the Way Where There Seems No Way” to help us find renewal in our lives:
1. Make an inventory of your joys. Sit down with pencil and paper and write them down, not forgetting the commonplace — a comfortable chair, the house or apartment that shelters you, faces that are dear to you. (I have done this for many years in what I call my “Blessings Journal.” It is simply a spiral notebook in which I write the blessings that have occurred that day. I find that even on the darkest day, I can find one or two blessings!)
2. Step outside and take five deep breaths of good, fresh air. Note every beautiful thing around you: sunlight dappling through trees onto a well-kept green lawn, a lighted train rushing through the night, moonlight’s silvery radiance lighting up a church steeple, the crunch of snow under your foot on a crisp winter day. (I just stopped as I was writing this and noticed that the vast expanse of the ocean today is sparkling with millions of tiny crystals of light, and I can hear the children laughing in the pool. How blessed we are to simply be alive!)
3. Do an unexpected favor for someone and note the look of happy surprise and gratitude it causes. It will fill you with joy. (Last night I took a Mum plant down to a 90 year old lady who lives in my building. The look on her face brought tears to my eyes. She is no longer able to read or to walk by herself, so my visit was the highlight of her week, she said. She talked and talked, and I was filled with joy that so iilttle of my time could mean so much to someone.)
I hope you will find ways this very day to appreciate someone in your home or office or simply someone you interact with as you go through your day. It will add to your joy and theirs and to the total amount of goodness in the world.
For more ideas on ways to become a more appreciative and hopeful person, get Barbara’s book, “The Simple Truths of Appreciation–How Each of Us Can Choose to Make a Difference”
