Invite more thanksgiving into your life.
As we are approaching Thanksgiving, why not use this opportunity to express gratitude and say thank you for what are happy for.
It doesn’t matter where you are from and maybe that your country or religion doesn’t celebrate the day of thanksgiving. We all need to remind us self, and people around us, about the good that is happening in our life.
Let’s start by defining the word ‘thanksgiving’: the act of expressing or feeling thankfulness.
So, let’s do just that, and why not involve your family and in the process teach them to remember to focus on the goodness in their life. Yes, life can throw us lemons, but there is always a light in the dark. There is always something or someone that we can say ‘thank you’ for or to. No matter how small it is.
Why not take it to the next level and celebrate thanksgiving every week or even every day.
How to invite more thanksgiving into your life:
• Try to eat to together as often as possible: often family life is so busy that we eat on the go, at separated times or maybe with a screen in front of us. But agree with you family that you want to start eating together more often. And why not make the meals ‘collective’: and together create a weekly meal planner, cook together, eat together and then clean up together. Creating these meals really glue the family together, since everyone feel valued, needed and part of something bigger than self.
• Say thank you: before digging into a meal, pause for a moment. Sit and look at the food and each other and the room you are in – observe the colours and shapes of the lovely food. Smell the food. Remind each other about who prepared it – say thank you. Remind each other about where the food came from (farmers, an animal, nature etc) – say thank you. Thank you for being in this room with my family.
• Happy and positive to bed: try this, every night before going to bed sit with your children and think of something nice that has happened during the day – say thank you. Thank you to the swing for the fun you had playing on it. Thank you for the rain that watered my flowers. Thank you to my friend whom I played with in school etc. When we go to bed with a positive and grateful mindset, we are more likely to sleep better and have nice dreams plus waking up next morning with a positive mindset.
So as you see, you don’t have to come from America to be grateful and celebrate this lovely day. You don’t have to save being grateful for just this day – you can include it your everyday.
Best wishes Mette Theilmann, Director or Predictable Parenting and founder of the Parenting Community app.