What if we started every day with gratitude?

Many of us just celebrated Thanksgiving. For some, this may have been the first year that we didn’t celebrate with our family (this was the case for me, out of an abundance of caution).

Personally, I love Thanksgiving. I think it’s great that we have a national ritual focused on expressing gratitude and sharing food with loved ones. It was weird to not celebrate with my family but, like with many things in 2020, the absence of what’s normal emphasized its value. It’s easy to take many of the most meaningful experiences in life for granted.

This has been a strange year and gratitude has been critical for persevering through it all. If you’ve been having a tough time over the last few weeks (or not), consider doubling-down on gratitude in whatever way makes sense for your situation.

Consider:

• Donating to a local food bank to help those who are struggling to meet their basic needs
• Writing out a list of relationships and amenities that you are grateful for (reach out to some of these people!)
• Tipping more than 20% for delivery, ride-shares, etc.
• Pausing to appreciate how wonderful every day experiences are: wake up to watch the sun rise just because, stare in awe at the shelves in Costco like you’ve never been there before, take a deep breath and smile like someone just told you that you’re having a good hair day

Life is hard. Regardless of if it’s particularly good or bad right now, being grateful for what’s going well can enable you to create moments of peace. 

I hope that everyone of you can find a way to consciously celebrate and affirm life. I would love to receive replies about what you’re feeling grateful for!

The Best of my Recent Reads:

• “I don’t believe in revolutions. I live here now, with the cows and goats. What I see out there, where you live, when my iPhone reception is good, is a kind of cosplay, which shows us that the wishful divide between “online” and “real life” is no longer real. The machines ate us, whether in the form of massive multi-player-role playing games that advertise themselves as a form of politics, or online platforms that stole everyone’s family pictures under the guise of greater social connectedness.” from Year Zero by David Samuels
  
  Highly provocative piece criticizing our extremely online zeitgeist and the accelerating consolidation of power by technology companies
  
  Thanks, Joseph Keegin for the recommendation, it’s a lot to process.
  
• “Those who excel are those who maximize each moment’s creative potential — for these masters of living, presence to the day-to-day learning process is akin to the purity of focus others dream of achieving in rare climactic moments where everything is on the line…
  
  The secret is that everything is always on the line.” from The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
  

I hope you find opportunities to appreciate the little things this week. Please don’t forget to share, if you feel like it!

As always, thank you for reading and for the lovely replies.

This post was initially sent on November 29th, 2020 as part of an early prototype of my newsletter Seeking Tribe, subscribe here!