Would you like to be calm—even serene—more of the time? Over the course of a month or so, you can come to develop the habit of thinking over how G-d has provided you with everything you actually need. (Think of the fruition of Nature if you do not—yet—believe that the Good L-rd cares for you.)
I am not at all promising that you will never be worried. Just that you’ll find that it does not pervade your thoughts when you have a problem.
Obtain a notebook that you can dedicate to this purpose, or at least a section of one. The traditional instructions are to write daily five happenings or five facts about your life which make you happy. However, on subsequent days, you are not to repeat prior items.
I think that these instructions are too restrictive. First, upon some days you might have a different number than five items to note—sometimes, one happening overwhelms all. And on some days, such as if you visited an Arboretum, you might want to note separately a number of the gorgeous plants that you enjoyed—a zoo, the animals—and so forth. Then again, there may be days when it is too difficult to extract from the tangle of your unhappiness more than the datum that you still are alive and breathing!
Furthermore, why ever not state the same glory on two or more days? Each sunrise, each sunset, is unique. The antics and development of your child are never really the same.
One benefit of this Gratitude Journal is that when you are down, you can read it to see how much G-d or Nature gives to you daily. There is nothing that you really need that you do not have. Wants, yes, but not needs.
More to the point of this essay, by daily habit, you are activating new pathways in your brain and even your genetic alphabet, the DNA, that will in time cause you to become more and more even-tempered, after a while calm, and eventually serene.
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