Choosing Gratitude in 2020

Thanksgiving is certainly one of my favorite holidays of the year. Over the years, the holidays that I favored have changed depending on where I have been in life. When I was a young adult, Halloween was a favorite for the fun festivities, creative costumes, and parties. After that, Christmas became my favorite. Becoming a mother, I watched the joy of the holiday through my child’s eyes which is magical. In most recent years tough, gratitude has become something I reflect on everyday. It is only natural that a holiday dedicated to gratitude would now become my favorite, this year more than ever.

Mourning Our Losses

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We have all heard the jokes and felt the pain of the challenges of 2020. We don’t need to count the ways it has been a challenging for so many. It might be hard to feel grateful when we view any setbacks we have experienced. We should certainly mourn any losses. Without mourning we stay stuck in a place of loss and cannot move forward. Once we have had time to mourn though, experiencing gratitude brings on so many positive feelings not only will it help us move on, it will begin to help us build hope for the future.

Benefits of Gratitude

If you’ve been a follower of my blog, it is possible you have seen my previous posts about the benefits of practicing gratitude. As a reminder, practicing gratitude improves your health, reducing blood pressure and heart rates. It also improves sleep, increases your productivity, and one of my favorite things, increases happiness. This is the short list. There is a long list of other things that can result from a regular gratitude practice. Happiness though is the one thing we could all use a little more of these days.

Beginning a Gratitude Practice

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Now that you are sold on the practice of gratitude you may ask where do I begin?? It can be as easy as carving out a few moments a day to just close your eyes and think about things in your life that your appreciate. Maybe gratitude to you could be the fact you opened up your eyes this morning or that you get to video chat with your friends or family today or even the warmth of the sun shining on your face. I assure you, no matter how bad things may seem, you have something in your life to be grateful for. If you are in doubt just take a few moments to think about it and before you know it, reasons will come to you. For additional ideas on how to build a gratitude practice, check out my past post “Gratitude – The Happiness Recipe”

A Year to Appreciate Unlike Any Others

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This year is unlike others most of us have experienced in the past. It will likely not be like any others we will have in the future. I will not pretend to know what any one individuals’ experience has been like as it is different for everyone. What I do know is that I appreciate you and wish for all that we all find the gratitude in what we have experienced, where we are now, and what the future holds. With this I hope we all find our own little slice of gratitude pie this Thanksgiving.