Leading up to Thanksgiving, each day I will blog about what I’m doing to be more grateful. I invite you to join me, and to share your thoughts, observations, suggestions and ideas.
Day 13: Taking a look at what a few other sources say about gratitude
I am hardly the first person to think of the idea of being more grateful. The benefit of participating in a trend is that I can share some of the best of what others are saying.
Elizabeth Scott’s Stress Management Blog
Elizabeth Scott writes a stress management blog on About.com, and she kicked off a gratitude program in October with a focus on increasing gratitude to reduce stress.
Developing an attitude of gratitude toward the people, things and events in your life is a life-affirming and effective way to strengthen your emotional resilience and reduce stress, among other things. Maintaining a gratitude journal makes it easy to get in the habit of focusing on the positive in your life, while also reaping the benefits of journaling.
Doing a gratitude journal? That sounds like a great idea!
You can follow Elizabeth on Twitter here.
The Art of Choosing Joy
A blog called The Art of Choosing Joy has referred several visitors to my Month of Thanksgiving project.
Here Choosing Joy author Kolette Hall writes about making a gratitude journal. She gives some crafty tips on do-it-yourself pretty gratitude journals, like the one at the right.
You might better appreciate her enthusiasm for gratitude journals after reading her profile, which includes this:
My husband, Jason is a quadriplegic. He broke his neck when he was 15 years old at the C5-C6 vertebrae. After we met in college at Brigham Young University, we married in 1992. Five years later he was in a life-threatening car accident which left him in the hospital for 13 months and then a series of hospital stays and about 20 surgeries over the next six years.
But in spite of our circumstances, I have found that life can be good; that I have the choice – to choose how I feel about my life and my situation. I get to choose my joy. In spite of the adversity and hardship that comes from being the caregiver of someone dealing with intense health issues, I have decided that I wouldn’t go back and change the challenge of dealing with Jason’s car accident.
1,000 Awesome Things
If you’re having gratitude journal writer’s block, you might want to check out the funny blog 1,000 Awesome Things, which celebrates hundreds of everyday pleasures including last-minute Halloween costumes, the surprise left-turn arrow and shooing a fly outside without having to kill it.
See, you don’t have to solve world hunger to give thanks.
Just one example, which might be appropriate for the weekend:
#658 When you meet up with a group of friends and they stop talking to celebrate your arrival
Sometimes you’re late for the date.
Stepping into the dark restaurant, shaking off your umbrella, squeezing past the bar, you don’t know what you’re gonna get: Who’s gonna be here? Have they already ordered? Will there even be a chair?
If you’re like me, baby butterflies flap in your stomach when you stumble into Tonight’s Social Scene for the first time. Brushing rain off your eyebrows, unzipping your jacket, you smile nervously as you spot your friends and walk over to their crowded table in the back.
And if your entrance is marked by heads turning, forks dropping, fists raising, and loud cheers, it means you’re hanging with a great group. So smile and accept their little Welcome Package of hugs and high-fives.
It’s gonna be a great night.AWESOME!
How are you doing with Month of Thanksgiving? Have you especially enjoyed any of the ideas you’ve seen? Has anything failed completely?