Capturing Good Things

Have you ever caught a glimpse of unexpected joy in the midst of an ordinary day? That's what we're calling 'glimmers,' and in the latest Create Harmony podcast, I, Sally Burlington, guide you through the art of recognizing and cherishing these fleeting moments.  Moreover, I reveal my personal tactic for maintaining a positive focus: penning down life's highlights on our family's whiteboard as a beacon of gratitude.

As springtime approaches, I give an update on my gardening adventures. So join me for a conversation that invites peace and offers companionship as we walk together towards a life filled with more uplifting moments.

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast. So this is a podcast that is all about savoring life's blessings and settling yourself into an intentional rhythm. So together we will learn how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. And if you want to learn more about how to bring stillness and gratitude into your life, there is a place for you here. And if you like to be creative and fun, you'll probably find a lot here that you love. In this place, we'll take a few minutes to celebrate those everyday joys and to remind ourselves how to notice goodness all around us. So our topics include ways to refresh your life, to raise your well-being and refocus you on peace and joy. So I'm your host, sally Burlington, and this is episode 73.

Speaker 1: 0:56

So over the past few weeks, we've been celebrating some things that I've had going on around my house. So two weeks ago, we talked about the transformation that happened in my sunroom. We painted a mural on the walls of our sunroom and we talked about that two weeks ago. And then last week, we talked about our raised bed garden project. So we talked about a garden inside and a garden outside. So if you missed either of those conversations, you might want to go back and listen in for some spring inspiration. So one part of the topics we've considered this spring has been glimmers. We've been talking a lot about glimmers and that's how we got into the two garden projects. So this is a term for little micro pockets of peace and joy and safety that we can find throughout the rhythm of our everyday lives. We don't have to go to any special trouble to find these little glimmers. So remember earlier when I said that we like to celebrate everyday joys. Well, glimmers are definitely what we mean those everyday joys. This is what we're all about here Ways to grab small moments of peace in your regular routine.

Speaker 1: 2:07

So if you've been listening for a while, you know that I am a paper planner type person. I use my digital calendar some, but I also love the analog version of a planner and it's the kind with the pretty stickers and how you write things and you know, just take a little bit more contemplative approach to goal setting and planning and I get my planner from a company called Cultivate what Matters, and their planners really help you focus on the big vision of your life and keep you from getting distracted by meaningless minutiae. So this planner, that in the planner that I have, the one that I chose there's a monthly check in thing that gives you different prompts so you can write how things are going and how you feel like you're evolving with your goals, and one of the prompts that comes up from time to time is called good things. Now, I'm all about gratitude practices. I love using gratitude to ground my thinking, but sometimes just writing all out the things I'm grateful for, that, to me, is a little bit. It's a little bit overwhelming. Maybe that concept is for me. It's just a little bit too vast. But when you ask me to think about good things, that's a lot more accessible. I just love the simplicity of this Just plain old good things and I think it's especially powerful because our minds want to naturally gravitate towards not so good things. So this is a nice way to create some new neural pathways for our brain. So I have been loving writing good things in my planner and I liked it so much that I decided to highlight this in our household a little more.

Speaker 1: 3:53

So at our house, when our kids were growing up, we always had this whiteboard near the outside refrigerator, and when we ran out of something you were supposed to write it on the whiteboard. So if you drank the last of the milk you're, you didn't just call out Mom, we're out of milk and hope that I would remember when it was time to get groceries that we needed milk. No, you wrote it. If you drank the last of the milk, you needed to write it on the whiteboard so that when I got ready to make the grocery list I would just go to that whiteboard and I would see if someone used the last of the olive oil or the bread or the milk or whatever, and so I would be able to make my list. So let's tie these two things back together. I'm going to bring it back around to good things.

Speaker 1: 4:37

So in this house I took the whiteboard we had that we were writing groceries on and I divided it in half and at the top I wrote the words good things and at the bottom I wrote groceries. So we still write down when we run out of milk at the bottom. But we try to take the top and write down as many good things as we can think of, From sunshine to meaningful work, to family visits, to the start of a new week, a spring rainstorm, yummy dinner, etc. All those types of things that are good happening in our days go on that board and when I walk by just as part of my regular day, I read those good things and I'm reminded of how much good surrounds me all the time. And on days that are not so good and we do have those here I can focus on those good things, those here I can focus on those good things. They're still there and it helps me move through it. And some days I stop and I try to think of some more good things that I noticed throughout my routine and add it to the board. And when the board gets totally full, we just erase it. We erase it clean and we just start again. It's like a never ending practice that helps us remember how very blessed we are.

Speaker 1: 5:53

I really wish I'd thought of this when my kids were younger and we could have gotten them into the practice at younger ages. It's really something you can do at any age. So I'm going to challenge you to think about ways you could capture and dwell on good things in your life. Where would be a good place for you to highlight them? I bet you have some great ideas for that. So just think about your life and think of ways that you could highlight where good things happen to you throughout your week.

Speaker 1: 6:24

So now we're going to turn to our closing for today. Today we're going to do a prayer, so if you'll shift yourself into a little bit more of a prayerful posture, you can take a deep breath, breathe in possibilities and breathe out gratitude. And here we go, gracious God, we lift our eyes up to you, we lift our gaze to see your goodness and your glory. Thank you for loving us and being with us right where we are. Help us notice our blessings, guide our thoughts towards things that are good, our thoughts towards things that are good, focus our minds on how much we have to share and help us know our worth.

Speaker 1: 7:18

Dealing with the negatives of our world is scary. We can get off track, but you never leave us. Our trust often falters, but you do not. Our hearts are ready to see your goodness. May it be so, amen. Thanks again for joining us today as we talked about good things, and hopefully you're accepting the challenge that I gave you and you're going to think about how you can weave that into your practice and highlight good things that are around you each day. And we'll be back next week to talk about some of the things springtime happenings around our house. I might be giving a garden update, so you have to tune back in for that, and until next time, peace.