How to Combat Boring, Ordinary Days with Gratitude
It was an ordinary, non-eventful day (the kind that’s just the worst for an Enneagram 4, like my oldest daughter), and she’d been organizing her room. On one of her breaks, she found me in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She’s recently been trusted with a knife and cutting board and wants to dice tomatoes every chance she gets. As she sliced through the tomato, she casually mentioned that she’d put her gratitude journal in a bin she’d named “Things That I Enjoy.”
Wait, you mean you found your gratitude journal?
This is the gratitude journal that’s been conveniently lost many times over. The one that’s too boring. The one with mostly still-blank pages.
I wonder if you can relate to her sentiment. Does gratitude feel insignificant—inconsequential? Boring and ordinary? All chore and no reward? A waste of time that could be spent doing something more exciting?
I get it. And my daughter—well, she does too.
For years, practicing gratitude meant trying to keep up with a November gratitude challenge (a.k.a. missing the beginning, and plenty of days in between). I noticed the way it shifted my outlook, but also felt the drain of one more thing to do every day. It was something to mentally check-mark before the day ended. And when November ended, I’d drop the practice until I saw others sharing their gratitude challenge posts the following November and realized I’d missed the beginning, again.
Maybe that’s you too. You’ve tried an occasional gratitude challenge. But the habit never stuck. You’ve tossed aside that gratitude journal. You’ve let the days you’ve missed convince you to stop trying.
But perhaps today is the day you give it a chance. Find that neglected journal. Look for one thing you can count as a gift and write it down.
As I shared with my daughter that day, gratitude trains our mind to stay in the present. It helps us find good and gift in the now. That’s why practicing gratitude is especially helpful for Enneagram 4s, who often find the present far less wonderful than what happened in the past or what they hope will happen in the future.
Gratitude helps us see beauty in what might appear non-spectacular. Grace in the hard things that grow us. God in the bleak horizon.
A needed backdrop
I recently finished Ordinary Walks with an Extraordinary God ** by Robyn Rison Chapman, and one of the stories near the end gives a powerful perspective shift. After describing how vibrantly colored birds stand out more on a dreary winter day than they when they compete with the colors of summer, Robyn wrote:
Seeing God is the same kind of thing. We often don’t look and see Him when everything is in full bloom and life is going the way we want. When everything is going as we want it, we are often guilty of not looking further. Instead, we look for Him when the leaves fall and struggle comes. Sometimes, when it’s winter, when it’s a dark season, we just need to open our eyes, and He is more easily seen. (p. 105)
Perhaps there’s purpose to boring, ordinary days: providing a backdrop that lets the good gifts God gives stand out.
Some days will be ordinary. Sometimes the view from where we stand looks drab.
But maybe we’ve been looking for the wrong things, and it’s blinded us to the many things that we are grateful for.
Maybe we’re looking for color in the backdrop and overlooking the right-in-front of us gifts that are beautiful and colorful too.
A treasure hunt
I’ve found that keeping a gratitude list is a lot like treasure hunting. You’ve got to start digging. Feel the damp dirt in your hands. Get a little dirty.
It will feel like work. But you’re fueled with anticipation. You are present and attentive. And this shift gives you a vantage point.
The dirt isn’t in the way, it’s simply part of the journey.
The “Things That Bring You Joy” are simply waiting to be uncovered. So let the simplicity of everyday life magnify them. Take the time to do some digging. Write down what you discover.
You may find that the treasure hunt itself brings you a heaping lot of joy.
** Link is an affiliate link, which means that at zero extra cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you purchase.
Meet Your Host
Twyla is an Enneagram-9, sourdough-baking, blueberry-tea-loving mama of three who believes it’s possible for YOU to actually form family-like community in your neighborhood and live a life that points to Jesus in natural, organic ways. Her greatest passion is to help imperfectly ready people take baby steps into neighborhood missional living. Check out her devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors, which includes group discussion questions for a 5-week study. Think you have nothing to offer your neighbors? Take her free quiz, “What Kind of Neighbor Are You?” to learn what makes you uniquely invaluable to your neighborhood.
Twyla and her family call Lexington, KY home.
Where to find her . . .
Begin Within is a series to inspire a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbors as well. Gratitude is a theme we talk about often around here because it ties so closely into other missional living rhythms. Practicing gratitude reminds to keep our hearts soft and expectant and our eyes open. Therefore, the more we embrace gratitude, the easier it becomes to truly see our neighbors and where we can join what God is already doing in our neighborhoods.
If you would like to contribute to Begin Within, you can find the submission guidelines here.
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Creating Ripples
If you would like to cultivate rhythms in addition to gratitude that will empower you live on mission in your neighborhood, check out Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors. This small book will help you make a big impact in your neighborhood as you learn to let missional living flow from the inside out. Get the 30-day missional living challenge free when you purchase the book.
