Stop. Look. Go.

Living gratefully today, I appreciate "A Grateful Day"  video, which I return to watch every few weeks. I encourage you to take five minutes to watch it. I am also grateful for the mobility I have today—physical, and also spiritual, mental, and emotional.

Stop. Look. Go. is a grateful living practice that the narrator of “A Grateful Day”—Brother David Steindl-Rast—also puts forth. Read more about it here. And in this post from my Habitual Gratitude blog, written on January 1, 2014. Welcoming a new day is what allows a year to unfold. Hour by hour. Day by day. In the eight years since I wrote that post, I have known deep pain as well as amazing joy.

Living gratefully builds resilience for the daily struggles, big and small. Living gratefully opens my heart wider to love, awe, peace, and acceptance. Yes, I am older, but I am also wiser because of the gratefulness in my life. Some I cultivate, but so much of it is presented to me as simple awareness and appreciation. I am not done. I have not arrived. I am just on the right road more often.

In short form, the practice is:

Stop! -- so that you will not hurry past the gift this moment offers you.

Look! -- so you will recognize this gift: the opportunity available now.

Go! -- that means: Do something with this precious opportunity!

In this moment in my life it looks like this:

Stop and smell the fresh coffee. Look around at my comfortable home, my husband, our dog. Go get a cup of coffee for Darcy and I. Enjoy it all for a few minutes before moving into my day with more calm and compassion.

What does Stop. Look. Go. look like in this moment for you?