Gratitude Practice as a Family

Do you have a Gratitude Practice?​

As we are coming up on the holiday season, it is a time to be thankful and grateful. The other day, I asked a question in my community about whether or not people have a gratitude practice and I was surprised that there are a lot of people that don’t.

There was a study done by Harvard, and they found that gratitude can truly change your life.  You will:

• have higher self esteem 
• sleep better
• have lower blood pressure
• have more energy
• stronger immune system
• more prone to exercise
• lower stress levels
• become more generous
• have better relationships
• more compassionate and empathetic
• happier, less depressed
• more optimistic
• greater resiliency
• less physical discomforts.

One thing that I would encourage you to do, starting today, is to start a gratitude practice as a family.  Grab some branches and a vase and cut some leaves (brown, orange, red, and yellow) out of construction paper then leave a marker and the leaves out on the dining room table and take time each day to write something you are thankful for.  By Thanksgiving you will have a memorable centerpiece that you can read at the dinner table to see what everyone has written.

I save them from year to year and keep them so that I can see what has been written over the years.   As you go through the years, if you do decide to hold on to these, you’ll see how things change over time.

Two other ideas for a gratitude practice

1. Take some time and write thank you notes to people, to thank people in your life for things they have done for you. This is a great way to pay it forward as well.  
2. Gratitude journals are another way you can practice. Write down three things you are thankful for each morning and overtime you will begin to pay more attention to the little things that are happening throughout the day.   

A Cal University study explained how they did a 30-day thankful for challenge. They had to write three good things that they were thankful for each day. And what this study found was that these people not only changed their happiness during the 30 days, but it lasted for up to and over six months. And all they did was take five minutes each day to jot down something they were thankful for.

If you want to start with a gratitude practice, I’d love for you to join us over in our Moms Raising Healthy Humans Community where we focus on things such as gratitude.

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