The Pinky Toe Challenge

pinky-toeI know I need to practice more gratitude, but sometimes it’s hard. I get stuck in my notion of how things ought to be and can’t get my mind wrapped around what’s right.

It makes me cranky and hard to get along with — I can’t even get along with myself.

Thus the Pinky Toe Challenge.

You know how you can accidentally kick a piece of furniture and have your tiny toe howl in anguish. It hurts so bad that you just want it to feel better. It’s like the only thing in the world at that moment.

Well, I think to myself, how’s your pinky toe? Safe, comfortable, not in pain? Then life could be way worse.

People have real problems. Sometimes so do I. But there’s nothing that can’t be made worse by banging a toe against a chair leg.

When I think about that, it opens a door into gratitude. Not only is my pinky toe OK, but the light casts a beautiful brilliance through the clouds. The hawk soars on a updraft. A million things, big and small, are going right. Maybe not everything is OK, but a lot of things are OK, and they put the not-OK into perspective.

To check on my pinky toe brings me out of my head and into physical reality. It disrupts the melodrama running through my psyche. It opens me to accepting what is and being OK with it.

I’m even less grumpy about things that are objectively annoying.

Up to the challenge? How’s your pinky toe?