Share Words of Gratitude!

The season of gratitude is just around the corner. Despite our desire to practice thankfulness everyday, we tend to focus in during the month of November, as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends. What if we chose to be very intentional the next 30 days and cultivated an attitude of gratitude we share with others?

There are people who journal, fill jars with slips of paper, capture moments through pictures and share their gratitude around a table with others. Each of these activities carve out a way to reflect on the things for which we are thankful. If you enjoy participating, keep after it. However, if you long for a new idea to challenge your awareness of being thankful, I might have something for you…what if we took the opportunity to focus daily on using our words, verbal and written, to show our gratitude to others. We encounter people all day long. We are instructed to love, encourage, build up and speak truth. We could take this and be intentional to thank each person for what they bring to our life or do for us. I wonder how this would shape our attitude and the attitudes of others.

The list of people we could potentially touch with our gratitude is endless. On any given day, we encounter family, friends, colleagues, along with service industry workers such as your barista, waitstaff, postal workers, store clerks, office receptionists, call-center respondents and teachers. I am only touching the surface. Our days vary, but our lives are full of encounters with people. Make a list of regulars and the occasional. With this list, decide who will get hand written notes and who will benefit from verbal praise during this season. Planning, preparing and executing will equate to a successful challenge.

Keep in mind, you can make this as simple as filling in one person a day on a calendar template for the month of November, or as complex as tracking how many times each day that month you convey gratitude to those you encounter. This is up to you. Go, speak words of thankfulness and see what happens.