texting top-five lists to those who matter to us

photo by jae park via unsplash.com

texting top-five lists to those who matter to us

a few years ago, i created a concept for myself, my close friends, and friends of my family. i would type a text of my top five favorite aspects in my day and send it off to a few people. this might be on a hard day, a mediocre one, or a great afternoon. either way, it had a mood-perking effect, and the specificity of my lists often ended up inspiring the friends and other loved ones i texted to put together their own lists, which they’d in turn send to me.

i still text top-five lists, but it’s always been random, when i have time to fit it into my day or remember the idea and how useful it feels heart-wise. on more difficult days, i might be more likely to use one as a way to lift myself into better space of mind.

but what i always loved most about top-five lists is how on a day when i wouldn’t remember to write one, a text from someone in my life would pop up on my phone with a list of the best parts of his or her day. that ripple effect suddenly known so literally felt incredible, and i couldn’t help but to want to keep pushing it onward.

it is also a smart and easy way you can challenge yourself in a healthy practice where you’re re-framing your thoughts into what you have to be thankful for in a given day, instead of sulking in thoughts of what we lack or what our problems are; even in the hardest of times, there is almost always at least one morsel to be grateful for in our days, if not a few, but we have to consciously work on remembering that, or it’s not of much use as knowledge to us. it’s so easy to dwell, complain, and worry. reminding ourselves of what we’re grateful to have, whether materially or in terms of something related to feelings, trains our brains to be present and you know, to also carpe diem, a bit!

as another angle of benefit, hearing what matters to those you cherish helps you to understand and know them better, which might also help you to be able to find a way to bring some kind of comfort to them in conversation further down the road into the future, when needed. this better connects us with people in our lives. there are literally lessons in everything, if you slow down to pay attention enough to notice and be more aware.

some examples of top-five lists might be: green tea with local honey, the sky, someone merging into the left lane on route 422 so i can more easily and safely merge, bob dylan songs, and amazingly-souled friends.

i encourage you to test this out within your own circle, and see how it goes. but remember that the value of the list really starts with yourself first, much like how giving gifts hopefully feels even better than receiving them, sometimes. if others hop on-board in making top-five lists, too, that’s just an added bonus and a nice way to know positives are tying everyone into similar mind-space.

and feeling good, grateful, and even fantastic about anything in our days is an absolute plus, considering how stress and pressure often leak into our hours more than we’d like to say is the case, especially nowadays.

what’s your top-five list today? throw this into some chatting, too. gratitude is always its own form of progress for us and our world.