November's Gratitude
It's the second to last month of gratitude. So I've been doing this for 11 months now and it's become a clear part of my life that I am indeed...grateful for. When I look back at the year, I'm am happy to see how taking the time to be thankful in my day-to-day life has contributed to pursuing other projects and actions that pushed me to share that gratitude beyond myself. In this manner, being grateful appears to be the gift that keeps me giving.
This month was a good month to focus on daily gratitude. Never mind that it is filled with Thanksgiving--the problematic US holiday for giving thanks (made more problematic than usual this year with events at Standing Rock occurring) but this month of the 2016 election and the bigotry and hate crimes that followed, keeping a focus on those things to be grateful for was essential for me. It would be extremely easy to slip into a deep sadness at the President Elect stocks his cabinet with white supremacists, climate-change deniers, and people who wish to take public institutions and hand them over to private interests. The future feels bleak on many levels but the daily practice of taking time for the many things that I can appreciate each day has helped to center me and move forward to fighting against the harm to come.
I also started writing thank you notes to authors and I have found that to be a great experience. I've realized how much I appreciate the people's whose work I enjoy so much but I never realized that just sending out a thank you letter to acknowledge their efforts helped me to better realize the efforts and impact o my life. So many authors that I write thank you notes to include specific ways in which I can say their words have impacted me and this helps me think or at least connect the dots more clearly about their work and my life...and we all know I like to reflect and connect dots!
Finally, there is this great article that I came across about practicing gratitude. It caught my attention because it did give me pause to wonder about how the thank you notes that I write are impacting people. I assume that they are received positively and I hope the act may inspire others to call upon people they are grateful to be thankful for, but ultimately, for me, it is just about saying thank you to people in my life for being the people who they are.
Well, that's all for now. One more month before I've completed my first year of the gratitude project. I wonder how I might tweak this for next year.
Check out the past entries on gratitude:
By Any Other Nerd Blog by Lance Eaton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This month was a good month to focus on daily gratitude. Never mind that it is filled with Thanksgiving--the problematic US holiday for giving thanks (made more problematic than usual this year with events at Standing Rock occurring) but this month of the 2016 election and the bigotry and hate crimes that followed, keeping a focus on those things to be grateful for was essential for me. It would be extremely easy to slip into a deep sadness at the President Elect stocks his cabinet with white supremacists, climate-change deniers, and people who wish to take public institutions and hand them over to private interests. The future feels bleak on many levels but the daily practice of taking time for the many things that I can appreciate each day has helped to center me and move forward to fighting against the harm to come.
I also started writing thank you notes to authors and I have found that to be a great experience. I've realized how much I appreciate the people's whose work I enjoy so much but I never realized that just sending out a thank you letter to acknowledge their efforts helped me to better realize the efforts and impact o my life. So many authors that I write thank you notes to include specific ways in which I can say their words have impacted me and this helps me think or at least connect the dots more clearly about their work and my life...and we all know I like to reflect and connect dots!
Finally, there is this great article that I came across about practicing gratitude. It caught my attention because it did give me pause to wonder about how the thank you notes that I write are impacting people. I assume that they are received positively and I hope the act may inspire others to call upon people they are grateful to be thankful for, but ultimately, for me, it is just about saying thank you to people in my life for being the people who they are.
Well, that's all for now. One more month before I've completed my first year of the gratitude project. I wonder how I might tweak this for next year.
Check out the past entries on gratitude:
- October's Gratitude
- September's Gratitude
- August's Gratitude
- July's Gratitude
- June's Gratitude
- May's Gratitude
- April's Gratitude
- March's Gratitude
- February's Gratitude
- January's Gratitude
By Any Other Nerd Blog by Lance Eaton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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