Being thankful isn’t just for Thanksgiving.
Ahh, November. A time for everything pumpkin, (gluten free) stuffing, mashed potatoes, colorful leaves, and, of course, being thankful.
It’s no surprise that on Thanksgiving we focus on gratitude. However, we should make gratitude a priority every day, not just one day per year!
We live in a crazy, hectic, overwhelming world that often feels very unfair and cruel. However, our world and life in general is actually pretty amazing, especially when we take a chance to think of all of the wonderful privileges, opportunities, and things we have, both big and small. Gratitude can help pull us out of our dark days and can help to put things into perspective when situations seem so far out of our reach.
It’s also been scientifically proven that gratitude opens the door to more relationships, improves physical health, improves psychological health, enhances empathy and reduces aggression, helps people sleep better, improves self-esteem, and increases mental strength!
Even when things seem really bad, there is often a lot to be thankful for. This gratitude doesn’t diminish the bad things that have occurred, but it helps us to not feel so negative and downtrodden. It helps us to realize how much good there really is and gives us the strength to pull ourselves through hard times.
One great way to practice gratitude is gratitude journaling. You can do this in a traditional paper journal, or there are many apps to do this too! I challenge you to try to find different things each day to be grateful for. While I’m sure that there are many similar things each day that we are all grateful for, it is even more beneficial to try to find new things because it makes us realize how there is always even more good than we think!
This Thanksgiving, I encourage you to have conversations with your family about gratitude, and I also encourage you to continue these conversations into your everyday life. While it’s amazing that we have a day that is dedicated to being thankful, we all should try to work to dedicate our lives to this too in order to build a happier, brighter future for all!
