Beyond Thanksgiving 🦃 and a gift for you 🎁
Thanksgiving can be about the turkey, stuffing, and sweet potatoes or it can be about the opportunity to thank and appreciate the people who mean the most to you.
But by merely surviving the holidays, we often miss the point of the season.
Instead of powering through your to-do list this Thanksgiving, why not be the source of appreciation and thanks and create a true THANKSGIVING?
Here are a few ideas to get you on the path to being thankful this holiday:
- Make a list of the 50 most important people in your life. If 50 is too many, go for 30. These are people who have contributed and made a difference to you in some way. It doesn’t have to be only people who you are in your day-to-day life. People from your past count as well.
- Write each one of them either an email or a card acknowledging them for the difference they’ve made in your life. This doesn’t have to be a long note. It could be a simple thank you to a high-school teacher for instilling a love for learning in you, or a note to a parent for being a source of inspiration, or to an employee for getting the job done at work, or an email to your boss thanking him/her for giving you the opportunity to express yourself in your career. I recommend being generous with gratitude in your note. This will create a space of appreciation in your life and relationships that has never been present before.
- Make it a point to thank three people every day for something. It could be thanking the coffee guy for your morning brew, or your child for putting her dirty clothes in the hamper, or your mother-in-law for giving you your amazing husband.
Be the source of giving thanks wherever you go. If you do this, it will enable you to build a muscle of appreciation that will expand beyond the holiday and have your life filled with gratitude for the big and the little things that make up your everyday life.