Weekly Journal – Being Grateful
One thing I am trying to focus on at the moment is being grateful. I think I took a lot of things for granted in my life. I also have a tendency to focus on the negative. For a while, I looked at my prison experience thus far and thought I had it worse than others because I have two young children. I was a very active father and being away from them, missing so many important moments in their lives is crushing me. I looked at other inmates around me that aren’t going through that and thought their experience of being here wasn’t as difficult as mine.
As I continued thinking about it, however, I realized I was looking at it wrong. The truth is I am extremely blessed to be in a position where I have people out there to miss. Many in here have nobody and quite a few that have kids have no contact with them. The fact that I have people who love me and kids I get to talk to each day and can’t wait for a future with me is a huge blessing and I need to focus on that and be grateful instead of feeling sorry for myself.
So I started trying to list 10 things every night that I am grateful for before I go to sleep. Some of them are just little things related to food or being able to get a run-in on the track. They might also be things like getting a letter or my family getting home safely after a long drive. I am trying to work on this with my kids too on our phone calls, getting them to join in with something they are thankful for. Hopefully, this will give me a better mindset and focus on the positives instead of the negatives.
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