"Here we are in a month named after the Roman god Janus, an appropriate personification of the start of the new year. This particular Roman god had two faces so that he could look ahead toward the future and back at the past at the same time. ..."

“It was a little over a year ago and I had just returned from a family vacation,” recalls positivity blogger David Pollay:

I sat down at the computer to read my email. I had “unplugged” for a few days. I was hoping that no big issues were waiting for me. I started flipping through each one quickly. I was on the hunt for anything bad.

You know that feeling. It’s great to take a vacation, but you’re afraid to return to a welcome party of problems.

After reading through about eighty emails, I had not found any bad news. It was interesting to me that I did not feel good about it. I did not even feel relieved. I felt mostly empty – the kind of feeling that leads you to grab a quart of ice cream and sit in front of the TV.

It was then that I woke up. I said, “What am I thinking?! I just missed an opportunity!” I was so focused on searching for the bad, I was blind to the good. Much of the email that I had received was actually full of positive news!

So that night I started doing something differently. And I have been recommending it to others ever since. I call it the “3 for1 Gratitude Stop.” Here’s how it works.

When you receive good news – via email, voicemail, or in-person – stop and quickly think of three things that you are grateful for as a result of this news. The 3 for 1 Gratitude Stop makes you pause to take in the good news and recognize the positive impact it has on you. It also makes you more aware of all the people in your life who help make these good things happen.

Why is this important? Consider the research of Psychologist Roy Baumeister. He found that people remember bad things more often than they do good things. If we do nothing to counter this, we are more likely to recall the bad in our life.

David J. Pollay, MAPP, is the creator and author of the international phenomenon, The Law of the Garbage Truck (Sterling Publishing). David is a keynote speaker, syndicated columnist, and popular blogger.

"Monastics," says author Philip Yancey, "have a practice they call statio that means, simply stopping one thing before beginning another:

Rather than rushing from one task to the next, use for a moment and recognize the time between times. Before dialing the phone, pause and think about the conversation and the person on the other end. After reading from a book, pause and think back through what you learned and how you were moved. After watching a television show, pause and ask what it contributed to your life. Before reading the Bible, pause and ask for a spirit of attention. Do this often enough and even mechanical acts become conscious, mindful."

Philip Yancey worked for 10 years as an Editor and then Publisher for Campus Life magazine before beginning a career as a freelance writer in the 1980s. He has written over 20 books and is among this generation’s most respected Christian authors.