Count Your Blessings

Stop looking from the wrong list.

🎶Count your blessings, name them one by one, count your blessings, see what God has done, count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. 🎶

It is that time of the year when we pick up our journals and open to the page where we wrote our goals for the year 2023 and then start to heave sighs, mostly because we didn't even achieve 50% of all we set out this year to achieve.

Many times, we question ourselves and the life that we have lived in the year, how we could have done better in some areas, how we messed up some opportunities and recoiled from windows that could have transformed our lives.

This is the time when people start to wonder if they are even good for anything, they set out to achieve seemingly simple goals this year, and they couldn't even mark up to 5 of the 15 things as what they successfully achieved, now they feel dejected, and the fear starts to lead the way ahead of 2024, as they wonder if the new year would even be any different.

If you are a part of this population, I'm boldly telling you that you are looking at the wrong list. You are defining your year through the wrong goal list.

It is easy to lose sight of all the beautiful things that happened in this year if we pit our year against what we had hoped it was going to be. It is very easy to think we only achieved five things and be dejected about it if we are looking at the limited list of what we had predicted the year would look like.

What I'm saying is, that very list you are looking at, the one that's making you feel sad and dejected and scared and worried about your lot in life or your seriousness, it's the wrong list! You're looking at the wrong thing! The only thing the list is good for is to pick out all that you achieved. After all, what were the chances that you'd accurately predict all that would happen in the year 2023? Even Nostrademus wasn't that accurate.

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When you are looking at the list of all that you hoped to achieve this year and you see the tiny fraction of the whole that you actually did achieve, pick out that tiny fraction from the list and do away with the rest in the interim.

Now put those things you achieved into a new list, and think about all the beautiful and life changing things that happened this year, things that didn't even make it to your goal list because you never thought about them at the beginning of the year, but you still achieved. Then add them to the list.

Add things you never saw coming but impacted your life positively in 2023.

Add all the relationships you cultivated that you never even thought about.

Add all the skills you developed that wasn't part of your goals for 2023.

Add all the things that made you smile, all the impact you were able to give and receive.

Add the love you gave and received. Add the value you created and got.

Add all the little things, the little miracles that made 2023 a blessed year for you.

I'll pause here and allow you to do that.

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When you are done, pick up the list and pin it to your wall to look at. That is the list you should view your 2023 through. That is the list you should count your blessings from.

With that list, it'll be difficult to feel dismay, because you really did achieve much! With that list, gratitude becomes easier, because now you have in your sight, all the beautiful little miracles that 2023 was made of. And chances are, you didn't even capture them all!

Use that list to count your blessings, use that list, counting them one by one, to express your gratitude for what the year was.

Use that list as a marker that, although it didn't all go as you planned it (it couldn't have), it still went beautifully.

Use that list as an assurance that if the year was this beautiful, if it gave you all these miracles on your wall, then 2024 would be a lot better!

2023 gave you a lot of blessings. Count them.

To your growth,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired. ✨