We both love a magnificent sunset! It’s always something we express gratitude for. This one was captured during a trip to Destin, FL.
Gratitude and attitude are not challenges; they are choices.- Robert Braathe
In this season of thanksgiving, today we’re sharing 5 of our favorite simple strategies to practice and attitude of gratitude. Expressing gratitude is a topic we have written about several times as a tool that can be used in solution-focused encounters with clients. And it is a practice that we both embrace regularly.
How can you get started with gratitude?
Here are 5 strategies to help develop daily gratitude habits:
- Have gratitude reminders. These are simple cues to remind you to focus on gratitude daily. Maybe it’s an alarm on your phone, a bracelet or wristband, a photo, a magnet or even a post it note. And with that reminder, pause, take a breath and focus on being grateful in that moment.
- Keep a gratitude journal. We both have found this to be a good personal practice to express gratitude more readily and find things to be more grateful for. Some log entries in their journal weekly, and others daily. Our personal goal is to identify at least 3 things daily for which we’re grateful. While the goal is to write in the journal daily, sometimes life happens and weeks may go by without an entry, but we pick right back up with our entries.
- Start a gratitude box. Keeping a box (jar, album, folder, or whatever works for you) filled with notes, pictures, and moments you are grateful for can bring a boost when needed. Tami keeps a folder on her desk and a file on her computer filled with nice notes and photos, as well as an album on her phone of messages and moments she’s grateful for to refer back to when she needs a reminder. Deb has a bulletin board in her office that displays happy memories in photos, ticket stubs, quotes, flyers etc. that she can look at during working at any time.
- Voice or write down one (two, or three) good things that happened in your day. On the homefront, this is a gratitude practice Tami used with her son over the years. In the days when she would take and pick him up from school, she found that the drive time was a good time to learn about his day. That conversation always began with these words, “Tell me something good that happened today.” He knew he needed to answer that, acknowledging something good, before talking about the challenges of the day.
- Use gratitude apps. There are a number of apps with a range of capabilities including sending reminders, sharing uplifting thoughts, and organizing memories for which you are grateful. We shared some favorites in this post.
If you are a health care professional and interested in learning more about our solution-focused practice and approach, when you subscribe to our blog, we’ll send you in return a FREE resource of 10 Solution-Focused Questions to start a solution-focused discussion with your clients.
Follow us on Twitter @AFreshPOVforYou
Deb is employed by Dexcom, but her words and opinions in this blog are her own.
Tami is employed by the University of Kentucky HealthCare Barnstable Brown Diabetes Center, but her words and opinions in this blog are her own.
