Well, what has happened today? Let me say that every day of this 30-day commitment I will either make lists of appreciation or do an hour-long visualization, or both – ideally both. I won’t always write about them however.

Today I finished off that one job I got so upset about yesterday. I still didn’t heal myself thoroughly on that particular issue. It seems to me that it is things like that that are best healed in the very moment you are experiencing the emotional reaction, and I didn’t do that right away. Once the emotions dissipate, there is no longer the need to heal them. However, the emotional reaction has a trigger, and the next time there is a situation to trigger the reaction, you will feel that anger again…or rather I will, in this case.  That trigger will keep on causing the same emotional reaction in you until you heal the source of it.

I learned that my sole employer/client for the last 14 years may be on the brink of going out of business due to lack of work. I very much appreciate the fact that my colleague at the company explained to me what had happened. I had noted in an email that the supply of work from them had dwindled down significantly since last spring. This makes me feel quite grateful that I started to separate from the company back in 2008, and even more grateful that I did not stay in Finland working for them, or even move to Sweden earlier and continue as their employee (which I was planning to do at one point in 2005–knowing what I now know about Swedish taxes, I can thank God I never made that move!)

I am also working on a different website for English language services and I just posted another page up on that site tonight, and that feels good.

All-in-all, Day 3 was not too outstanding.

It’s good to always feel appreciation and look for things to appreciate all around you.

I appreciate that I have all the necessary elements in place to achieve financial security.
I appreciate I have a business in place as a good, valid platform for earning money legally in any field and in any way that presents itself to me.
I appreciate my diversity of skills, talents and experience.
I appreciate the uniqueness of my skills, talents and experience and the great value I could provide to people who need my competencies.
I appreciate that people will gladly pay me money for the value I provide them through my competencies.
I appreciate that it really is just a small step for me to take from where I stand today to my financial security.
I appreciate that it is a very easy and quick trip there.
I appreciate that at this moment I got a nudge of inspiration to record this 30-day trial on my CA website. Now I will answer that call.
I appreciate the inspiration I received to post about this on my website.
I appreciate the job interview I had yesterday.
I appreciate the opportunity to begin tutoring in English.

Since I have been in this new habit of writing out lists of appreciation, now and then I manage to come up with some somewhat shocking and unexpected things to appreciate. The most shocking of these is this:

I am grateful for all the people who have hated and abused me in my life, including and especially family, because one who has been loved and cared for in life can never feel the overwhelm of divine bliss of being loved and cared for for the very first time.

I came upon this while basking in the glory of my love. Sometimes I think and feel that no one can appreciate this love that I am in with this man. Sometimes I am beside myself with joy and appreciation and love so deep for him that I begin to cry.

It was a moment like that that I realized the vast canyon between how I have been treated all of my life, and how good this man is and how he loves me. And I stand on the safe side of that canyon looking back on the abusive side and all the people on it – far, far away – and it makes me cry.

I had been in a real funk since last week. On Friday, I had a terrible day involved in mind-bending interchanges with a client who had asked me to do an extremely thorough proofreading. My interchanges with that client had such a horrible effect on my emotional state, that it has taken me this long to pick myself back up. And how?

This morning I woke up and wrote out a list of some things I had been taking for granted recently and I felt gratitude for them. I love making these gratitude lists, because once I get started, all kinds of new things and aspects of things to feel gratitude for pop into my mind and I add them to the list.

By the end of this exercise, I was feeling as high as a kite. When you deliberately list out things you can feel grateful for, by the end of the process, if you spend enough time doing it, you feel like an ultra-special person.

After this experience today, I decided I am going to make a gratitude list every morning for the next 30 days. It is a great-feeling way to start the day and to stay optimistic and it served to pick me up out of my funk when nothing else I tried was working.