The Art of Noticing

How Daily Gratitude Reshapes Our Worlds

It is just before dawn as I write this. The neighbors car is silent in the driveway, still too early for the street to be waking up. There are birds singing gently as the sun begins to light up the horizon. There is a blanket tossed over my legs, a cup of tea steaming next to me. The morning air is damp and cool, but here there is warmth and I am happy to have it.

This is gratitude, this deliberate tuning of attention to what exists in its completeness in this moment.

The pretty pink of the morning sky, the beavers paddling in the river across the street. The light fragrance of green tea mixing with peppermint steam. The solid back of the sofa holding me up as I write.

These are simple things, but they are already given, already enough.

It would be easy to let my attention land elsewhere. To think of the things that must be done today, to worry about the things I do not have. The car needs an oil change and the windshield probably needs to be replaced. I’ve got a busy work week scheduled and yet my business isn’t growing as fast as I want it to. My middle child is growing faster than I can keep up with and already needs new shoes. I could go on with this list of wants and needs and worries and end up spiraling with concern and fatigue.

But I have something, a daily practice, that lifts this weight and keeps me grounded.

Gratitude as a practice of noticing what is already present, changes everything.

From the moment I wake up, I see the extraordinary woven through my ordinary days. It’s absolutely a choice to wake up this way, and when I do, the pile of good things grows and grows.

The sunrise doesn't ask to be appreciated, the chickadee building a nest doesn’t scream for attention or thanks. But the way sunlight glints off the river water makes my heart glad when I see it. The sparrows in the grass make me smile when I slow down enough to see them. This cup of tea warms my hands and my heart, and I am grateful to have it.

When we truly notice what exists in its completeness something shifts in our relationship with our world. We begin to see with a grateful heart all that is presently happening for us, and the worries begin to seem less important.

Gratitude wakes us up to what we truly have and suddenly what we have begins to expand.

There’s this buzzy kind of phrase tossed around in spiritual circles these days. “Spiritual bypassing” referring to this idea of using spiritual practices to skip over feeling or facing unresolved emotions or wounds. It’s this idea that we won’t stay rooted in the realness of our own life if we ignore the hard things.

I worried once that waking up each morning and running through a list of what I am grateful for would be bypassing the difficulties of an often life.

Isn’t it funny what notions we get sometimes? What roots me more into the realness of my own life if not gratitude?

When it is winter and the sky is dark and gray, skeletal trees black against the sky and I want to sink into the long exhale of the cold - when life is inordinately difficult and I wish that it wasn't mine anymore - this is when gratitude reaches out and pulls me back to earth.

Gratitude is not just a response to good things happening. It is a practice of uncovering the beauty that exists in the bleak or mundane. It is a conversation with the world through our attention. It is a transformative practice that multiplies the good by expanding our capacity to perceive the truth and beauty in our daily human activity and interaction with the world.

The world we inhabit is changed by the intention of gratitude - because we are changing how we engage with the world.

Gratitude does not deny or bypass genuine hardships at all. It’s a simple recognition that whatever challenges exist in our life, there also exists a parallel of gifts waiting to be noticed.

Gratitude isn’t a this or that practice. It is a this AND that practice. I need to fold the laundry AND the shadows cast by budding leaves are beautiful.

My car windshield needs fixing AND I have a car that takes me everywhere I need to go.

My week is packed with things to do AND I can still wake up early and quietly watch the morning sun slowly flood my street with light.

I had to consciously choose to build this practice of gratitude - and today I’d like to share with you what I did to make thinking this way become a habit.

Practicing Gratitude

Three Things Before Breakfast: before you get out of bed, or simply before you get into the preparation for the day, list at least three things that you are grateful for right in the present moment. Maybe something you noticed as you woke up, maybe something you that happened yesterday. Take note of it and be actively thankful for it.

Threshold Moments: Pay attention to natural transitions in your day. Starting the car or putting food on the table. Walking into a different room or starting a new activity. Use these transitory moments as reminders to notice one thing with full attention. The texture of the steering wheel. The light coming through the window. The sound of the sink filling with water. Just allow yourself to make note of your ordinary life. Often in these moments the beauty will appear and you will find yourself suddenly struck with wonder or gratitude.

Three Things Before Bed: Before you fall asleep, mentally revisit three moments from your day that you'd miss if you hadn’t had this day to enjoy. Not accomplishments but experiences or small moments. Recall a conversation, a sound, something you noticed that made you smile.

These practices may seem simple, but they will slowly build a habit of noticing your own life and contemplating the ordinary with gratitude. Gradually reshaping your world, you will become a witness to wonder and find that your mindset shifts from complaint or worry, to observation and awe.

Today, I am grateful for you, spending your time reading this. I am grateful for the sound of my children in the next room, playfully growling at each other. I am grateful for the now cold cup of tea that still sits next to me, and grateful I had the time to sit down and share this with you.

If you’ve been reading my work for awhile now, you’ve probably noticed I write about gratitude a lot. I write about it because it matters and because it always helps remind me of why I focus on my little daily practice of gratitude.

I was reviewing what I’ve written on gratitude already and found that at roughly this time time last year, I was again writing about the benefits of practicing gratitude. There must be something about spring that just pulls on the attention in a different way!

If you’d like to read that piece, you can find it here: