What I learned:  Ok so to begin - Hooray - I actually started doing gratitude with my family.  I decided to tack it onto a habit that we already have so we do it right before our family prayers.  It has been so good.  I also learned that I need to make it as simple as possible - not worry about haveing a cute chart or a cute something to show it on.  That the important thing is the gratitude not displaying it in a cute way.  My family needs to get to all the awesome benefits.  At this point of this episode we have been doing it for about 12 days and plan to keep going. 

A reminder of all of the great things gratitude can do.  It can change the brain.  It helps you change the things you are looking for throughout the day.  You start looking for things that are going right. 

You notice when someone shows up at just the right moment and I loved the reminder from the talk by Bonnie D. Parkin that Gratitude is a source of faith.  Just like the experience I share about my husband and daughter moving a table and desk and two of the men from our ward showing up at the exact right time.  

Bonnie D. Parkin (former General RS president)  -  Gratitude the path to happiness.  A talk in 2007) "As we pray and express gratitude to a loving but unseen Heavenly Father, we are also expressing our faith in Him. Gratitude is our sweet acknowledgment of the Lord’s hand in our lives; it is an expression of our faith."

Also a reminder from the past few weeks is that gratitude of appreciation is an antidote to fear and that gratitude can help us lean into joy when we are feeling forboding joy.  

And then I also found this quote from Ep. 147 Growth and Gratitude -  "If a person could do only one thing to increase their health and happiness, expressing gratitude might be it. Martin Seligman, a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, has remarked, “when we take time to notice the things that go right – it means we’re getting a lot of little rewards throughout the day” (BrainyQuote, n.d.).

I also loved going back to the video that President Russell M. Nelson put out the week before Thanksgiving in 2020 reminding us all of that gratitude can heal us and to challenge us to post something we are grateful for each day before thanksgiving and to also challenge us to have a prayer of Thanksgiving.  I will link that post. 

So I loved the things my family said that they enjoyed - thinking about their day and finding something that went right.  Noticing that things that other people in our family value. Also that at first it was a little bit hard to think of things but then as we continued to do things it became easier and easier as they learned to look for the things.   

So many great benefits to gratitude.   So I am going to do the 100 things challenge this Thanksgiving to get their brain working on all the many things they are grateful for. 

Have a wonderful thanksgiving.  What a blessing it is to get our minds in this thankful place, where we can heal and unite and then spend the next few week giving to others.  

Sooooo many episodes over these past few years where I have mentioned gratitude - Here are a list of some of them.