Practicing Gratitude
Photo by Freshh Connection on Unsplash
It’s that time of year and I’ve got some thoughts along with three ideas to help you with your gratitude practice.
But first—WOW!
What a fantastic response to my giveaway—in exchange for iTunes reviews and SpeakPipe messages. I LOVE my listeners!
Thank YOU. Or, I could say, Danke Schön, Gracias, Merci—this will all make sense once you listen!
I opened today’s episode with a snippet of this talk, from Dieter F. Uchtdorf. You can listen in full, HERE.
Kid you not one of the BEST Christmas gifts I’ve ever received. As you might imagine—totally unexpected! I saved the BIG box to open last and had no idea what was inside. At first I was a little disappointed, but trust me—I’m NOT now. I won’t go into all the details here, but if you’re ready to upgrade your basic toilet seat and give the person on your list “with everything” something they likely don’t have. CHECK this out.
Moving beyond toilet seats, I absolutely believe that gratitude is something we LEARN and something we put into practice. I believe it is something that can and will change our lives. One of the things that I love to do is remind myself just how fortunate I am—we all are. It’s so easy in today’s world to be overwhelmed with divisive politics and disasters, natural and manmade. But when we intentionally make the world a smaller place, we see what we truly have and begin to appreciate what we can truly do. The Village of 100 has been an useful tool for me in this regard.
I first came across the concept of a Village of 100 back in 2011, when I found Toby Ng’s awesome posters, each designed to illustrate the prevalence of certain categorizing criteria in our world. At the time these posters were available as a FREE download, so I printed them and put them together in a notebook as a great resource for helping my children better understand exactly what they have and can so easily take for granted. Now you can purchase these designs as postcards.
Image copyright Toby Ng
More recently I found this awesome video on YouTube with a very similar message. It was created by the folks at Knovva Academy which is an awesome online academy.
Want to learn more about the neutrality of circumstances. Listen to this podcast episode from Jody Moore.
My THREE ideas for a more focused gratitude this month are …
Speak the words, please, thank you and you’re welcome in a different language each week (of November). I’m certain that doing so will cause you to slow down just a little and pay closer attention to the requests you speak and the opportunity you have to converse in grateful ways. And, just for FUN, here’s the link to The Grand Hotel on netflix. This show is what inspired this idea.
Create a space in your home for family members—or at work for co-workers to document the little, everyday things that you catch yourself noticing. You might even share this list around the Thanksgiving table or use it on a scrapbook page or project of some kind.
Look into joining Cathy Zielske’s 30 Days of Thankful. I love how Cathy has made this month-long class into a community and given us so many ways to share what we notice. I’m all in.
Again, I am VERY GRATEFUL for YOU.
Thank you for being a part of me—leave me a comment here, OR connect on social media @stacyjulian on instagram or @stacyjulianllc on Facebook.
