Jools Sinclair - See the Beauty: A 30-Day Celebration of Your Magnificent Life

See the Beauty

A 30-Day Celebration of YourMagnificent Life

by

Jools Sinclair

Copyright 2018 JoolsSinclair

YouCome Too Publishing

Allrights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, orportions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may bereproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverseengineered, or stored in, or introduced into any informationstorage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whetherelectronic or mechanical without the express written permission ofthe author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this bookvia the Internet or via any other means without the permission ofthe publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchaseonly authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in orencourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

For Joe,

aka Mr. Jools,

For the beauty that youare

and the beauty that weshare

See the Beauty

A 30-Day Celebration of YourMagnificent Life

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Inbeauty I walk

With beauty before me I walk

With beauty behind me I walk

With beauty above me I walk

With beauty around me I walk

Ithas become beauty again

Navajo Prayer

T his 30-day program is a path backto seeing life, your life, as it truly is: amazing, big, andbeautiful. Its a practice of interactive gratitude that willhelp you notice and then record the beauty in your life every day,letting you unplug from a negative world and reawaken into apositive one full of grace and appreciation.

Your life isfull of beauty right now, even with the credit card debt, the extra20 pounds, the divorce, the troubling news in the world, theterrible boss, and the car that makes a funny noise when youaccelerate. Even in the midst of all the chaos, you are surroundedin beauty. But if youre like most people, you barely know itsthere because youve fallen into a habit of focusing on the badinstead of the good.

I know thisbecause thats exactly what I was doing for most of my life. I wasliving inside a fog and I didnt even know it. It finally dawned onme one day when I returned from a long walk.

Itwas during a period when I was writing my bestselling mysteryseries Forty-Four . Life was good. I was making six figures a year for thefirst time ever, I had fans waiting for my new releases, and I wasdoing what I had dreamt about since I was a kidwriting for aliving. But for some reason I wasnt particularly happy. Despitethe money and success, most of the time I was still swept up andfocused on the nitty-gritty problems of day-to-dayliving.

One afternoonafter hours of being locked up with my main character, I was eagerto escape and get some fresh air. Walks have always been animportant part of writing for me, a chance to release endorphinswhile thinking about plots and scenes. So I slipped on my shoes andheaded outside.

After a block or so, I stopped thinking about the story andturned my attention to my sore heels, which had been hurting anddidnt seem to be getting any better. This thought led me tothinking about how I probably should go see a doctor, and thisthought led to how I had gained weight and didnt want to get onthat scale. As I rounded a corner, my brain hopscotched back to thebook I was writing, but suddenly veered over to my frustrationabout how Forty-Four had been close to being made into a television series, buthad lost out to a zombie show. (No, not that zombie show.)

My mind was ona wild ride, Mr. Toad at the wheel with no brakes and plenty ofgas. When I turned around and headed back home, it kept going. Ithought about obnoxious politicians, annoying celebrities, andabout how the housing market had recovered everywhere in thecountry except the place where I actually owned a house.

When Ireturned home I drank some water and went over to an openwindow.

And thatswhen it hit me.

The blueskies. Warm air. The smell of hot pine needles in the soft wind. Itwas the end of summer and the bright leaves had just a hint oforange at the edges. Purple wildflowers grew in the yard, redberries cascaded off vines, butterflies fluttered near thegrass.

It was afantastic time in Bend, Oregon, and I had battled snow and ice andcold temperatures for five months to get to this brief oasis ofsunshine and warmth. And yet on the walk I had missed all of it,hadnt even given it a second glance.

It was astartling and painful realization. But then I thought of somethingelse.

What if thiswas happening all the time?

What if Ispent most days focused on the negative aspects in life whileignoring the blessings around me?

Not longafter, I started a simple daily practice of noticing the beauty inmy life and recording it in a journal. And not just natural beautylike sunsets and colorful leaves, but all kinds. Everything that Isaw, touched, tasted, heard, smelled, and felt. The beauty of thepeople I interacted with, the beauty of good writing, the beauty inthe books I read and the music I listened to. The beauty indrinking a glass of wine at four oclock on the deck, the soft furof my cat at my fingertips.

I wanted togive these moments their proper respect, give them the attentionthey deserved. I certainly focused a lot on all those bad, gratingthings, why not spend at least 20 minutes a day thinking about allthe good ones?

I made thecommitment to sit down in the late afternoon every day with myjournal for one month. And because I wanted this new practice to befun and not just another writing obligation, I bought some nicecolored pencils to sketch little illustrations alongside my shortentries.

Iput all of it in my journal, big moments of beauty and littlemoments. Everything. The email from a reader who loved my books,red-gold sunsets, cooking lasagne allabolognese , the conversation I overheardbetween two five-year-olds talking about Batman, watching a Dodgergame, a full moon rising up over the mountains, impromptu and sillydancing with my husband.

And, as theweeks went by, something magical happened. I started seeing moreand more beauty, and it soon felt like I had entered into anotherworld. A world that existed right there beside the negative one. Aplace that left me feeling happy and appreciative.

And that was how See theBeauty was born.

The program isnot about slapping a happy face on devastating events or pretendingthat life is wonderful when youre experiencing difficulties andare in a dark night of the soul. And its not about picking up apencil and drawing a flower when everything feels like its fallingapart.

Life is hard.But, if were honest, most of us would agree that our lives arentfalling apart most of the time. Still, were in the habit of givingour attention and power over to negativity, a darkness that drainsour energy and spirit. This negativity is everywhere, wanting andneeding and feeding off the light inside us.

Its on ourphones, tablets, and laptops. Its on the television at the gymwhen were trying to do a workout and at the hotel breakfast bar.Its in the lunchroom chatter as we refill our coffee mugs. We havea tendency to not only listen to bad news and gossip, but we alsospend valuable time reacting to it.

Im not suggesting that you should remain ignorant oruncaring of the worlds woes. What I am saying is that you shouldbe the one in charge of your focus. Not Fox News or CNN. Not theWhite House. Not Wall Street or Madison Avenue. You.

See the Beauty is a simple practicethat allows you to step back, unplug, and start giving yourself alittle time each day to appreciate your amazing life. And when youdo this, youll begin seeing the following: