6 Ways to Show Gratitude this Thanksgiving 2022
As we begin to prepare our minds for the upcoming New Year it’s important to begin remembering what we are grateful for. Reflection on the past year can be a powerful way to remind us of our gratitude. Additionally, it can prepare us to show our appreciation to others. Showing appreciation should be a daily habit if we are focused on being the best version of ourselves. This is the time of the year when it’s most important.
We can be grateful of multiple people, places, and things in our lives. Gratefulness comes with no shortage of feelings we may experience. We need to learn how to embrace those feelings we are having. If you never have made it a point to really think about all your blessings. Take the time to allow the emotions to take over. Allow yourself to get lost in peaceful bliss of gratitude. It will no doubt bring a smile to your face.
The experience will be different for all of us. Opening your thoughts about gratitude will allow you to feel a cocktail of emotions like humility, fulfillment, and freedom. You may even experience happiness and pure joy. Look at the following areas in our lives to be grateful for. Try to allow yourself to feel the goodness that comes with each one of them.
1 Family and Friends
There are those in our lives that mean the most to us. They are the ones that give our lives value and meaning. Grandparents, parents, siblings, significant other, children, friends, co-workers and everyone in between are who I am talking about. Taking the time to reflect on how important they are to us can be profound thoughts. The deep connections with them are a part of who we are. Showing our appreciation to them deepens the relationship. We should show our appreciation. This can be very simple gestures like a card, kind words, a small thoughtful gift or giving your time to help them with something.
2 Experiences
Life is full of experiences. Going even a step further, everything that happens in our lives is a learning experience. Being grateful for our experiences is vital to our growth as a person. Embracing our experiences can help us learn and become a better person. Often experiences come and go. What’s important is to think back to those experiences over the last year. Not all of them but the ones that make the biggest difference in your lives. The milestones of our motion forward or the little events that set new ripples which created vast outcomes or maybe it was the quiet times where we just needed to breathe. Whatever the case may be, find gratitude in your experiences.
3 Things
Who doesn’t like stuff? We all buy things we enjoy. We all have those possessions we embrace that bring us comfort and enjoyment. Being grateful for these things isn’t wrong. Some of those things are a part of our life and who we are. They are the little things that make us a little bit happier. We shouldn’t ever justify our feel they are guilty pleasures. We should embrace what makes us happy as simplistic, or insignificant it may seem to others. Be thankful for the things in our lives.
4 Places you’ve been
Most of us don’t get the chance to travel the world. Furthermore take multiple vacations throughout the year. But when we do it can make a profound impact on our lives. In some cases getting away can help us reset and obtain new perspectives. We can be grateful for the places we’ve been and it doesn’t have to be half way around the world. Maybe over the past year you went to visit a friend or family member in the hospital for the last time or helped an old friend move out of their house you’ve known for years. Whatever your story of where you’ve been hold on to the memories and the feeling of them because the feelings associated with them may not last forever.
5 Skills personal and professional
I think it’s safe to say that we all have some type of personal and professional skills, which has added to who we are today. Some of us may have to dig a little deeper to realize this but they’re present in us. Additionally, it’s important to recognize these skills. Work or hobbies are both important to our lives whether we just tinker in something or make a career out of it. Life can always be worse no matter what your circumstance. So, this year while you’re reflecting on your past think about what you’re good at. Lastly, think about the enjoyment it brings to your life knowing what you know.
6 Your Health
Spiritual, Mental, Emotional and Physical health are all vital to who we are. We may want to make improvements but if we are reading this it means we are still alive. With that we should be grateful for the health we do have. I think the idea would be to find our balance with each of these areas but we will get there. Having gratitude for what we have is important to our “now” or our present circumstance. Think back in 2022 or in the past year, of times where you had to rely on a particular part of your health to get a job complete. Maybe you spent some extra time praying or meditating. Quite possibly, you had a really tough test you had to study for and you had to focus by use mental endurance. There may have been situations where you may have been depleted but you survived you kept pushing forward to this point in your life.
Conclusion
For some the past year has been a whirl wind and for others it’s been easy sailing or somewhere in between. Whatever your situation or circumstances you can still be grateful for your life and the experiences you went through. Life teaches us many lessons and only makes us stronger as we navigate through. So, for this Thanksgiving while you’re reflecting on your life over the past year, consider that you did the best you could with what you had. Most importantly, after your reflection make sure you give it back in your service to others. Lastly, be grateful that your future will be brighter because of your experiences and gratitude.
If you like what you have read, check out other articles on the website ThinkingDeeplySelf-Critically.com the site is designed to give us tools and techniques to help us become the best version of ourselves. There are four main categories on the site. The Foundation, Our Responsibility to Us, Our Responsibility to Others and Facilitating Crisis. We can also be found on Pinterest.
