Thanksgiving seems like a wonderful time to talk about gratitude. What are you grateful for? Perhaps, your family might come to mind. Or if your family wasn’t the greatest, maybe you have people who are your chosen family. Maybe you just got a new job, or something wonderful has occurred in your life.

Realistically, the big things don’t happen all that often. However, if you think of it, there is probably something you are grateful for right now. Many simple things happen daily. Perhaps someone smiled at you, held the door open, or someone paid you a complement. Maybe you are grateful because your partner takes out the trash, someone has helped with the household chores, or that you have a beautiful garden. Remind yourself of these daily occurrences.

Gratitude has also been something known to ward off depression, as it’s impossible to feel gratitude and sadness at the same time. Just try this yourself. Think of something you are truly grateful for. Perhaps you have someone who loves you and treats you well. Lets use this an example. Sit with that thought and think about it. Notice your body. Where do you feel the gratitude? Is it in your chest, neck, face or some other part of your body. Does it feel warm? Does the warmth spread? Just feel whatever comes up. For most of us, it’s a very nice feeling.

There are many different ways to practice gratitude. Below are a few.

  1. Just sit and think of who or what you are grateful for, as the example above.
  2. Buy a gratitude journal. This could be any booklet with blank pages whether it’s a spiral notebook or some beautiful journal you have purchased. Each day, write something you are grateful for. When you are feeling down, you can go back and look through your journal to remind yourself of the warm feelings.
  3. Share one thing you love or appreciate with your partner daily. You can each do this for each other. Not only do you feel good, but also so does your partner. It is wonderful for relationships. You can even do this with your kids.
  4. Make a gratitude wall. You can take a sticky note and write 1 thing on it daily that you are grateful for. Then designate a certain area in your home to place all the sticky notes. Again, when you are feeling down, you just need to go to your wall.
  5. If you want to get really creative, I’ve heard of someone painting a tree trunk and branches on their wall. They then bought leaf shaped sticky notes and wrote their daily gratitude on it. Soon they had a tree with many leaves.
  6. There is a wonderful talk on gratitude by Shuan Achor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXy__kBVq1M

The ideas are endless, and these were just a few of them. I wish all of you a warm and Happy Thanksgiving.

Debbie Grammas, Ph.D.