Wednesday 3 April 2013

Online Community - 3rd Day of Gratitude

To begin this post, I just want to reiterate "Grateful in April" is not my idea!

There is a website (Link Here) and an excerpt of that site below:

Grateful in April has been created by m.a.d.woman founder Melina Schamroth to encourage people to feel great about themselves no matter what circumstances they are facing. A social entrepreneur, speaker and author, Melina is known for innovative and creative ways of encouraging, inspiring and enabling people to make a positive difference to their community, environment and people in need.

I first stumbled upon the site last year, at a time in my life when I really needed something positive to hold on to each day, nothing in my own life seemed to be providing me with that.

Once I thought about the concept of gratitude, I started with the small stuff. Yes, it was difficult to simply be grateful for being alive, when some days I would have happily not woken up. It was hard to be grateful for the food on the table when I really had no energy to prepare or cook it. But that is the point, the little stuff, I had to see how lucky I was, REALLY was, to even have food to prepare, to have a bed to sleep in (or even expire in).

And THAT, is the benefit of gratitude. One baby step after another and it grows, so does something inside of you. In the end, I started this blog.  And as they say, the rest is history!

Although I still have days when I scream at the top of my lungs wonder "Why me?", I truly do try to look for just one thing each day, that I am grateful for and some days that is simply, I had the energy to get out of bed.

I do at times get side tracked and can go for days or even weeks at a time forgetting to focus on my gratitude, and that is why I decided to get back on the wagon and commit to the whole of April, and what better way to be accountable than to put it out there on my blog?

Just so you know, these posts are not sponsored or paid in anyway.  The only benefits I receive are the personal benefits I feel for my gratitude. So I suggest you try it too.

Today, I have had a good day, I caught up with a few friends and had a nice lunch with good company (Hi Pat *waves*), but the best part of today and the thing I feel most grateful for, is my online community.

You see yesterday, I posted my 2nd Gratitude post, but I also posted this one.  It is about a family in South Australia who are in need of some support, and in the hope of getting that support have written an open letter asking for it.  I basically copied that letter on my blog and distributed it via Facebook and Twitter and there has been such a heartfelt swell of support by people who also have helped to get the Fox family's story out that I cannot be more thankful. It lifts your spirit when a community comes together, particularly for such a good reason. Thank you to all those who have helped.

So while we live in a time of perceived overuse and abuse of social media I am grateful for the community I have found and to them I am thankful for their support of fellow Australians.

Today, I am grateful for the support of strangers my online community!
My Happy Ending will be to actually meet some of my online community IRL over time.

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