Attitude of Gratitude - Gratitude Jar

One of the things towards my goal for the new year is an attitude of gratitude! I've been keeping a list of things I'm grateful for at the end of each day. Most of us have a hard time remembering all the great and wonderful things that happen to us through out our year.  We all tend to focus on the negatives. At the end of this year, I'll be able to go back and reread all of my bits of paper to demonstrate to myself just how blessed I am, even during the difficult times.

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend." ~ Melody Beattie

To help me with that, I've set-up a gratitude jar. I went to World Market and got this spiffy new jar/lantern:

I looked online for a template to use. I wanted to be able to write down things each day and drop them into the jar.  I found a template I liked on a site called Weekly Gratitude.

You can find the templates in this post.  I took the subject off mine, re-sized them to fit 8 to a sheet of paper using .5 margins in Word. I printed them out then cut them into slips of paper for my jar. They were fairly plain so I took some markers and added some color to them. Or if your whole family is using just one jar, you could assign each person a color for the year!

I keep a supply of the slips and a pen in the jar for quick and easy use each day. I like to keep my jar in the living room so if someone else wants to write something down or if I have a guest that wants to leave a message, they can do that as well. Once my gratitudes are written out, I fold the piece of paper up and drop it back into the jar. I can't wait to watch my jar fill up!

Below is a sample of one of mine. As you can see from the picture below, it's going to take me some time retraining myself into writing 2015 instead of 2014. 

If someone leaves you a memory, you may want to ask that they include their name where the date is as well. I might work on a label for my jar that provides those instructions so everyone can just leave a quick message if they feel like it.

If you make a gratitude jar, I hope you'll share your ideas! I'd love to see what you come up with!