With November upon us, and Thanksgiving as the month’s focal point, it’s natural to reflect on gratitude.
I haven’t always been a grateful person. I wasn’t a spoiled brat as a child, but I don’t remember feeling a lot of gratitude for all of the blessings that my parents provided for me. My teens were spent being extremely self-focused (as, I suppose, most people’s teen years are) and not centered much on gratitude at all. I spent most of my twenties feeling discontent and dissatisfied with life, with far too many of my thoughts focused on how I wished my life was different.
It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I began making an effort to consistently focus on being thankful no matter what the circumstances were. I certainly fail in that effort on a regular basis, struggling to overcome grumpiness or irritation to find my way to gratitude.
But I keep trying, because I know now from experience that gratitude = happiness.
Last year in this post, I mentioned that research has shown that practicing gratitude results in a long list of physical, emotional, and social benefits. But what, exactly, does “practicing gratitude” look like? How do you do it? Is it just a matter of counting your blessings, or keeping a gratitude journal?
Yes, those are a couple of basic and valuable steps to get you started, and even if that was “all” you did to practice gratitude, you would still benefit from the focus on the positives in your life.
But I have a different challenge for those who want to either take our gratitude practice up a notch or two, or for those who have never thought of practicing gratitude but are ready to begin doing so with enthusiasm.
Research indicates that even more powerful than simply thinking about what you’re grateful for, or even journaling about it, is expressing gratitude to the giver of your blessings. Study participants who paid a “gratitude visit” with the purpose of expressing thanks to someone in person experienced more lasting positive effects than others in the study. In fact, those participants showed higher levels of happiness and lower levels of depression a month after the study was completed, exceeding the researchers’ expectations.
And so my challenge to you — and to myself — is to spend some time this November not just thinking about Thanksgiving, but actually giving thanks throughout the month.
Here are a few ways you might consider doing so:
- Send a text message every day to say thank you to someone for something. Try to make it a different person every day.
- Assign each member of your household to a day of the week, and on that day each week (meaning about 4 times per person throughout the month), slip a note under their pillow thanking them for something specific they did/said/are.
- Choose one person each week to send a hand-written note to, explaining that the month of Thanksgiving is the perfect time to thank them for fill-in-the-blank. (In this age of communicating electronically, who doesn’t love receiving a note in the mail?)
- Think of a group of people who don’t often receive thanks for what they do. Nurses, first responders, postal workers, teachers, church volunteers… Take them a gift of baked goods, coffee, or some other small token of gratitude, along with a note telling them why you’re grateful for the work they do.
- Choose one person very close to you for whom you’re exceedingly grateful. Beginning on November 1, make a list of one thing you’re thankful for about that person each day, and present the completed list to them at the end of the month — or on Thanksgiving itself, which would make the celebration sweeter for both of you.
- Keep a daily list, as above, but then turn it into a special Christmas gift in the form of a scrapbook or other creative item. (Grandparents might especially love a gift like this if their grandchildren have contributed to the list of things they appreciate about them!)
- When you’re checking out at a store, ordering coffee at Starbucks, or buying stamps at the post office, go beyond a mindless “thank you” at the end of the transaction. Instead, use the words “I appreciate…” and finish the sentence with something you truly do appreciate about the person or experience. (“I appreciate the way you’re always smiling,” “I appreciate how quickly you bag my groceries,” “I appreciate how hard it must be to stand on your feet doing this job all day…”)
- Peruse the book of Psalms, looking for the specific chapters that focus on praise and thanksgiving. Spend some time praying each one to the Lord as a way of expressing your gratitude to Him. You might start with Psalm 96, Psalm 98, Psalm 100, and Psalm 103.
- Read Psalm 136, which is a list of thanks to God for what He did for Israel, and then write your own psalm of thanks to God using the same format, thanking Him for what He has done over the course of your own life.
This list is by no means exhaustive, nor is it meant to be detailed marching orders. These are just a few ideas off the top of my head for practicing the expression of gratitude during the month of November; I’m sure you can come up with many more of your own.
My suggestion is to be intentional now by making a plan for the month, but please don’t bite off more than you can chew! Be realistic about the time and energy you’ll have in the next few weeks. There’s no need to add stress to your life in the interest of expressing gratitude.
I’m going to be writing more about different aspects of gratitude throughout the month of November, but for now…thank you for reading! 🙂
Watering the Willows 