Chasing my Dreams!

AND THATS A WRAP!…for this awesome year-long Tick off the list – and for 2016!

Following on from my updates during the year of this very personal, and surprisingly empowering Tick off the list

#206. Write down something I am grateful for every day for a month

…today I filled in my final entry for this year, in my Q&A a Day journal…

“What is your most cherished memory of this year?”

Such a nice way to end ‘the year that was’ (and a year I want to forget), with being ‘asked’ through my journal to look back and pick out a cherished moment.  This is the beauty of this challenge…when I’m ending the year absolutely exhausted and healing from 2016 coming very close to breaking me – I am reminded of these moments which I will never forget…

Meeting Tobias the Quokka…

…and, what has become my Christmas tradition I look forward to every year – the absolutely magical wonderland that is the Mooloolaba Christmas Boat Parade

Reading and reflecting on this final entry in my journal has changed my focus to “Ugh…what a year, I cant wait to leave it behind me!” as the final evening of 2016 approaches, to…”I am so grateful I got to experience these special moments this year!”
Don’t get me wrong, I will be SO glad to shut that door on 2016 at midnight – but my focus is ending the year on a more positive note now, because of todays final entry/day of this Tick off my list!

I am so glad I persevered through the year through this challenge – I personally love those ’30-Day Challenges’ and have completed a few over the years (and have already earmarked a new one to start off 2017), but I didn’t know how I’d go doing this for the entire year – I attempted a ‘Photo a Day for a Year’ challenge a few years back, and I just got too sidetracked with my life itself, that I didn’t continue it. This Tick ended up becoming one of the favourite parts of my day – no matter what I was facing, or had faced, during my day – I was always taken back to my very personal thoughts and reflecting on my day, no matter what was going on around me – through this journal and Challenge.  How we each live through our days, no matter how we interact with the world – doing this is a very personal experience – and to put my thoughts (making sure I was doing so on the angle of ‘Gratitude’) down in words every single day during 2016 – it became something I very much enjoyed in my day, in the minutes/seconds it took to write my thoughts down from the prompt – even the rough days!
In this incredibly challenging year I have just been through – this little book was my ‘saving grace’ in a way…on a daily basis it brought me back to what was really important…my inner self, not my external situation at the time.

Looking forward to the next year of thoughts to ponder – it’s going to be interesting seeing my previous words in 2016 to the prompts, when I fill in the new entries in 2017 (this is a 5-yr Journal)!

1st March 2017 – Update!
Well…the first two months of filling in entries in my 5yr Q&A Journal have been interesting to say the least! Comparing the ‘me, and my thoughts’ from exactly a year ago each day/entry, its very empowering to read and reflect on just ‘where I was last year’, to the ‘now, me’. Very, very empowering…all the hope for the future I had, all the fight it took to get me through ‘what was 2016’, it has all been very, very worthwhile to see, in my own words and thoughts, the changes in myself, deep down inside!

I’ve decided to add on a new angle of ‘Write down something I am grateful for every day’, by creating a Happiness Jar!

I started this at the start of February by decorating up an old coffee jar into a colourful, fun container, and using bright sticky notes to note down anything which ‘brings me happy’ in my day.  This has become a little bit addictive – and yesterday being the end of the month, it was a lot of fun to take the notes out (I have stuck them into an exercise book as a keepsake) and read through my ‘Happy’ for February! I’m all about bringing in fun, colour and being creative as much as I can into my life….so this suits my spirit perfectly!

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE when you bring yourself back to what’s important – YOU!