My Gratitude Journal

Another wonderful day and week in Carlsbad Village by the Sea! It is a blessing we get to come visit our Casa del Sol when it is empty between vacation guests. Between the cozy inside, tropical yard, pool, spa and location near the Village and beach it is a wonderful place to enJoy coastal SoCal! Ashby got to play with Blakey & Brandon today. Blake is staying over right now for this first time! They are having fun playing and watching movies on Netflix. I am writing in the living room in front of the fire and Christmas tree... Thank you so much for Casa del Sol!!!

Today was another beautiful day in SoCal. It began waking up next to my wife Patty and son Ashby warm in bed. Ashby got up early as usual and energetically ran out to the living room. Patty got up and made sure he was happy and started cleaning the kitchen. I lay in bed eyes closed, giving my daily thanks for yesterday, today, the past and the future. Another beautiful day was about to begin! Ashby came calling "Dada, get up!" I got up slowly and played with him. He was a good boy after a little terrible three's tantrum... I helped Mama fill the dishwasher and the kitchen was clean! Patty had a sore throat and wanted some garlic bulbs. I hoped on my red beach cruiser and biked down to the beach. It was a cold morning with gray skies for SoCal. The ocean was glassy and high tide kept the shore break alive. The bike down the PCH was almost empty, rare for a morning in Carlsbad. Only a couple die hard surfers sat out at Terramar, the rains had come down hard the day before

And perhaps the most popular practice is to keep a “gratitude journal.” As we’ve reported many times over the years, studies have traced a range of impressive benefits to the simple act of writing down the things for which we’re grateful—benefits including better sleep, fewer symptoms of illness, and more happiness among adults and kids alike. We’ve even got our own “community gratitude journal” on Greater Good . The basic practice is straightforward. In many of the studies, people are simply instructed to record five things they experienced in the past week for which they’re grateful. The entries are supposed to be brief—just a single sentence—and they range from the mundane (“waking up this morning”) to the sublime (“the generosity of friends”) to the timeless (“the Rolling Stones”). But when you dig into the research, you find that gratitude journals don’t always work—some studies show incredible benefits, others not so much. To understand why, I took a closer loo