Six months ago Pam Grout launched a brand new chapter of her version of AA, which stands for Amazing Awesomeness. And the best thing about this version of AA is that it only has two steps.
Step one, admit that… “something amazingly awesome is going to happen to me today.” First thing every morning, before I throw off my covers, before I leap out of bed, before I fire up the old Mr. Coffee, I proclaim to the world that something unexpected, exciting and amazingly awesome is going to happen to me today.
It takes what, three, four seconds? Yet it’s one of the most important things I do each morning. The first few minutes of every day pre-paves the next 24 hours with positive expectations. It sets up a powerful intention, a forecast on which I choose to focus. And it never fails to come true.
Step two, come to believe… in blessings and miracles. I pretend to be a private investigator assigned the task of finding all the beauty and largesse in the world. The dominant paradigm might suggest otherwise, but practiced with regularity, this ritual has allowed me to see things in a whole different way. Instead of looking for problems, I’m on the hunt for blessings. And like Chicken Man used to say, “They’re everywhere. They’re everywhere.”
To make sure my thoughts don’t return to their slacking tendencies, I also text three blessings (A.K.A. amazing awesomeness) each morning to five friends who I refer to as my “power posse.” The only stipulation is the list has to be different every day.
I often liken myself to Lewis or Clark, scouting important new territory.
Because we get out of life whatever we focus on, practicing these two simple steps has radically changed my life.
Since I’m writing about travel today (being a travel writer is one of the amazingly awesome things I get to do) and looking over my itinerary for an upcoming trip to Namibia, I thought I’d demonstrate this simple program by sharing the awesomeness from a recent adventure to Belize:
Thursday: Easy, on-time flights, staying on a 7200-acre rainforest preserve and drinking Argentinean wine with the resort’s South African manager.
Friday: Exploring a 3000-year-old Mayan site, howler monkeys who sound like Jurassic Park and rescuing my favourite hat before it plunged down an 800-foot waterfall.
Saturday: Swimming three-feet away from a three-foot loggerhead turtle, seeing lemon sharks, barracuda and a giant school of blue tang and being invited to watch the Caribbean cup soccer finals on an outdoor TV while eating just-caught barbecued lobster.
Sunday: Egrets and pelicans on my morning beach walk, mimosas and gelato before my 10 a.m. flight and getting home 30 minutes early.
What will you declare today?
“What’s the point of being realistic?”–Will Smith
