Going on a 7-Day Gratitude Retreat with no Tickets or Place to Stay

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT: https://www.dollexaminer.com/2018/06/30/going-on-a-7-day-gratitude-retreat-with-no-tickets-or-place-to-stay/

GOING on a Gratitude Retreat is not as hard as you think. However, we usually envision planes, trains, and automobiles for this, but do we need to?

Consider what we usually think about when the idea of a retreat comes up. Amanda Montiero went on a ten-day retreat in Hawaii to get away and she collected insights along her journey:

1. You Can Do It All By Yourself
2. By Experiencing New Things, You Change!
3. You Can Learn Something New
4. You Can Never Have Too Many Friends!
5. Experience Real ‘Me Time’
6. Look Around You
7. Ditch The Phone
8. You Can Allow Yourself To Be FREE
9. Do It For Yourself, And No One Else
10. Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself

Also, Alex Hogrefe, an architect, envisioned an amazing Icelandic retreat he could build where people could come to seek solace and a visual, experiential sense of retreat.

But does going on a retreat need to be that amazing or earth-changing in order to make a continual difference for us?

The simple and nourishing answer is no.

Only you can chart, plan, and go on an amazing gratitude journey - no one else can do it for you. And even if you have the most grateful and positive friend or network of friends, they might encourage you greatly, but the steps of gratitude are all to be taken by your own shoes.

Great news! You won't need any tickets and you won't need a new place to stay! All you'll need is a grateful heart that is able to learn new ways and deepen existing habits of being positive and hopeful.

A gratitude retreat - for starters - is not something you have to book in advance and you do not need to go anywhere new, but instead you can start right now. As I explained in the previous article about Finding your Reset Button, the practice of consistently having gratitude can take you amidst the feelings and 'stuckness' of you may encounter for a variety of reasons. The result, however, is that you will create a better day-to-day reality.

Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor from 161-180 of the common era, gave a number of meditative quotes on the idea of taking a retreat. In a sense you could say that he was using the Twitter of his own day with these ideas. Here are a few zingers that are attributed to him:

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love,

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts,

and

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

Clearly, a gratitude retreat is something that can help us not only to get back on our usual even keel, but can also deepen our roots for staying on course. I originally thought of this idea after listening to a number of presentations by John Gray, who is the new pastor of Relentless Church in Greenville, South Carolina - a church of 20,000 plus people. John Gray has a contemporary, uplifting style that he described in the Greenville News as "James Brown meets James Taylor meets Lady Gaga meets Run DMC meets Billy Graham meets Michael Jackson."

So, what did Pastor John Gray do that has to do with gratitude retreats?

Actually, Pastor Gray has a habit when he is teaching of getting caught in a moment of absolute positivity where he stops and tells the audience to take a "praise break." Oftentimes these are for 5 seconds, or 10 or 20 or even 30 seconds. The idea stuck with me at the time because I was writing my second book, A Voice Crying Out for Vision, and every so often in the book, I asked the reader to take a "Gratitude Break."

Why is a Gratitude Break so important? It forms the nucleus of a daily reset in your thoughts, emotions, aims, and intentions. It means taking a break from having other thoughts and instead focusing on things that are good, positive, beneficial, and hope-producing! What is more, the practice of having gratitude begets having even more gratitude!

Personal Story

Today, I am on the 4th day of a 7-day Gratitude Retreat. What it involves are 5 daily devotions on the idea of gratitude in 5 different areas each day. And not only that, but then it also means making sure that the rest of each day involves contemplation on the areas chosen for the day.

The truth is that there often can be a lot of noise in life, and noisiness in general, due to the fact the life can be complicated. I am not suggesting that we do not listen to the demands of our schedule, the requirements of our work, and the needs of our family. Far be it from what I am saying! Instead, I am suggesting that within the scope of fulfilling all of these goals - whether they be from our schedule, or work, or our family - we simply keep our mind, thoughts, and emotions aligned with what we have said we are thankful for during that day.

Let's play this out for a second. On day 1, I chose 5 areas that quickly put me on a more hope-filled and positive mindset about things that I quite honestly had been worrying about the day before. Thus, I decided to make lemonade out of lemons. In other words, being grateful as a habit can help us over time to see strengths in important things rather than to simply worry about them. On day 2, I chose 5 areas that deepened the gratitude from the day before. I even mentioned that I was thankful for being on a Gratitude Retreat!

Yesterday was day 3, and it was also a non-work day. Since I was resting and not trying to exert too much energy, I did not have my trusted journal during some outings for that day. As a result, I decided make a mental list of 5 things that would be easy to remember. To do this, I chose to use the teaching idea of Alliteration (picking things of the same letter) and my letter for that day was F. Thus, I reflected on F for Family, Faith, Fulfillment, Freedom, and Friends. I even added a 6th one, Fatigue, and then journaled thoughts of gratitude about these in detail later in the day since they were so easy to remember.

On day 4, which is today, I decided to use alliteration again and chose the letter U. That means U for Understanding, Undertaking, Undertoe, Utility (which refers to the power we have over each day), and Uprightness. Just thinking about these five areas gave me an idea that tomorrow, I will not use Alliteration, but instead make an Acrostic so that the 5 areas spell a word. In that way, the word I will use tomorrow is G-R-E-A-T. I could have used any word or name for that matter!

It's really important that the Gratitude Retreat begins in the morning before anything has really taken place yet in our day. As such, this habit can allow you to put out 5 balloons into the sky of your life - or 5 paintbrush strokes onto the canvas of your life - and then see what happens in those areas later in the day.

In no way am I trying to make a formula so that you would simply expect specific positive changes or growth in the areas you name on a daily timeline. Rather, I am suggesting that you let your mind pick areas to be more sensitive in towards your role, contributions, hopes, and impact, and then just go about living each day forward.

There is no way of underestimating the power for positive change that you can have in each day when you start it in this way using the tool of gratitude.

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