Day 3: Adding Gratitude

Live in the Orange Zone - Day 3

30 Days of Self Study, Meditation and Reflection

Welcome to day three of Living in the Orange Zone.

I wanted to share my journal as I have been every day. I have been taking some orange paint and a brush and just stroking across the top, very artistically and creative, to represent what the orange zone means to me for the next 30 days. It means to step out of my patterns and out of locked ways of being into new possibilities, new ways of thinking, new ways of holding my body, new ways of seeing my world through a different lens. 

The orange for me every morning, is a different meditation. This is a new chapter for me, this is a new beginning. So far, we have a sacred time, we have a sacred place, and we have sacred silence to begin our meditation. I would like to add to that.  

The next thing we add to our meditation is gratitude. I've been doing a gratitude practice for years. I know many of you have as well. Let's take this gratitude practice and put it in this frame of orange, which is “new beginnings”, and choose something that represents that for you. I chose shells, I chose shells and sea glass from all over the world. I've been collecting for years and I picked out 30 of them and put them in a beautiful bowl that my friend Tamara made for me. They are sitting on the altar. 

Every morning after my silence, I take a shell and I hold it to my heart and I say thank you for my mom. I just sit with love, how much I love her and how grateful I am. Then I choose the next stone and I say, thank you for my Papa. I just sit with looking at him and, and feeling my love for him. And then I go on to where I live, that I put my toes in the sand today. 

I like to encourage you when we do our gratitude practice to choose a couple shells that represent something new, so that we're constantly scanning our days and the moments of our days for that new thing that we want to be grateful for. I just saw Hawk fly by and am grateful that the hawks live in my neighborhood, and are such inspirations to me. 

We're adding this beautiful practice that is going to change our moods. It's going to change our body chemistry. It's going to lift our sense of having some control over how we train our mind to think about the moments of our day. When we're finished, we'll go back to our silence, your lighting of your candle, all the things the same, and adding this gratitude practice.

The quote for this week was by Emerson. You have your time to also reflect in your journal about the quote, about your gratitude, about listening, lyrics, anything that comes up for you today. Just be open to shifting and things changing. 

I know for me, I keep telling myself, you know, move the furniture a little bit Di, and move out of the normal way of seeing it. So today I just had 20 minutes where the beach was still open. I jumped in my Jeep and drove down there and got to put my toes in the sand. That felt to me like I got out of this pattern of how I teach zoom in the morning. Something that's simple, but it shifted my day and I was so glad that I started my day that way. 

I invite all of you to join me living in the orange zone today.

Day 3 Inspiration
Today's inspiration comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
​
Bring some peace into your life.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Click the links below to find out more:
The Orange Zone - A 30 Day Practice - YouTube Playlist

​Daily Inspirational Quotes for 30 Day Meditation

Blog Post: What is the Orange Zone?