Many studies have been done and much has been published by people who know a lot more than we do about the beneficial effects that come from gratitude, the power of positive thinking and numerous other terms for the same thing. Deborah Norville wrote a wonderful book that I read several years ago called Thank You Power, Making the Science of Gratitude Work For You. In his book, The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale says, “The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Scatter sunshine, forget self, think of others. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.” A former Phoenix news anchor, Daryn Kagan, created an amazing website (www.darynkagan.com), which says it is "your one-stop shop for uplifting and positive stories." What we did on a small scale, she has been doing daily on a worldwide scale for years. There is even a business we love and follow on Facebook called Life is Good! Their tag line is "spreading the power of optimism" and everything they do is about just that. They even just had a Life is Good Festival on September 21 and 22. So you see...we didn't create the concept; we just jumped on the bandwagon! Let's face it, there are a LOT of good people out there doing good things and good "stuff" happens every day to each of us. The choice is ours as to what we do with it.
All we did was test these theories out in our own small world. Really, the effects and results have been amazing. It has kept us focused on at least one positive thing every day and has really magnified how many good things happen every day in each one of our lives. We find this to be true even when some things are not going so great. Just focusing on something good can change our whole outlook for that day. We're not going to lie...some days have been harder than others, but the opposite of that is there have been times when we've had far more material to work with than we had days! We also believe that our strong faith in God and His provision for us, along with belief in the power of prayer and in real-life miracles, has been directly related to pointing out so much wonderful subject matter for our daily observations.
In the end, it's been a great year for us in more ways than one. This project has really helped us to realize that and we sincerely hope to keep the good vibes going, even if we just think to ourselves of one good thing that happened at the end of each day. We challenge all our friends to do the same thing.
We don't know what our next project will be, but we do know there will be one. We're thinking, though, that it might be a weekly project instead of daily. Maybe that will give us time to post some of our awesome photography on other days. Maybe we'll actually start blogging again. We have far more ideas banging around in our heads than we have time for! If you've got a great idea, we sure hope you'll share it with us.
And, before we close this blog (our first in a year!) we want to thank those of you who followed us, commented, liked, shared or even just smiled at some of our posts. We couldn't have done it without your support urging us on to do the next one.
Since it's been a whole year since we started this project, we thought we'd share a few of our oldies, but goodies...otherwise known as some of our favorite posts and photos. Don't forget to keep taking photos and having them taken. They bring back some pretty awesome memories, sometimes just when you need them most. So, here we go...in no particular order:
Love and blessings...
