Exercise is a necessary ingredient to a healthy lifestyle, and making your exercise fun is a key component to doing it over the long term. When exercise is fun, fitness is easy. Haven’t you noticed that the things you actually like to do are always easy to do, and the things you dread the most are almost impossible to bear? We understand the mindset that pre-paves both of these experiences, yet it can be difficult to break out of old habits of thought to create and sustain a new vibration around exercise and fitness. Sometimes all you need is a little “get up and go” combined with a fun game to make it easier. Here is what we suggest: Take a Gratitude Walk. When we can, the GP Staff leaves the building together for a fitness walk, and lately we have been playing a gratitude and appreciation game we call “find the best thought.” You can do this with friends, or even all by yourself. Here’s how it works. Look at something…anything…that catches your attention. It can be a house in the neighborhood you are walking through, or a car, or a bird, or a trash can…anything you observe in your immediate environment. Call out, or say to yourself “I see a house…and I like its (fill in the blank).” So for example, someone might say, “I see a car, and I appreciate its deep blue paint job.” If you see something and you can’t think of anything to be grateful or appreciative about concerning it, find the best thought you have access to about it. This might sound something like “I see a dented car, and I appreciate that it’s not mine!” You may get a laugh from the crowd, or you may just chuckle to yourself; but you did well finding something that felt true, and something that was the best thought you could articulate in the moment. The next thing you see, if you stick to reaching for gratitude and appreciation, will probably provide better aspects to praise. Look for them, find them, and articulate them. Before long, the vibration of the group (or within you) will start to rise and expand to a very connected and blissful place. One word of caution, however. This game can be played in the opposite direction, where you put down, make fun of, or become critical of the things you see. This will expand the vibrational range downward to thoughts that feel worse and worse the more you think them. The beauty is that you get to choose the direction that your thoughts flow, and when you feel better, everything looks, tastes, feels, and smells better. Your fifteen-minute walk that used to feel like two hours will feel more like fifteen minutes, and the fun you have raising your vibration will become the immediate payoff for your exercise. Instead of thinking “I really should take a walk today” you will begin to crave your Gratitude Walk instead. Go ahead and get out today, alone or with a few close friends, and enjoy this amazingly wonderful day!  Be Well, –GP Staff

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