5 Great Gratitude Resources for Thanksgiving
By the Mindful Leader Team
What is gratitude? It isn't the same thing as being thankful. True gratitude towards the people in your life, workplace, and even strangers can transform you, both spreading happiness and even boosting your own health. Below are some resources we've gathered on gratitude and how to practice it in advance of the holiday.
1. How to Practice Gratitude from Mindful Magazine
This article has it all: an introduction to gratitude, the science behind it, and several practices to start.
2. Discover Gratitude from the Mayo Clinic Health System
This is a free, virtual program where you journal daily for a month. The Mayo Clinic includes free gratitude journal sheets, three columns to journal on daily, and several resources about gratitude, mindfulness, and kindness.
3. The importance of cultivating Gratitude in the workplace from PWC
This article goes in depth about what gratitude is and how it can be utilized in the workplace.
4. 13 Simple Ways of Expressing Gratitude at Work from Thrive Global
This article gives the reader easy tips to start bringing gratitude into their workplace life today.
5. Mental Health Is... Gratitude from the University of Colorado Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder recommends several mindfulness practices to start your gratitude journey. Additionally, they go into the concept of gratitude guilt and how to be aware of it in your practice.
What gratitude practices have you tried? Comment below and let us know!
3 comments
I appreciate your message but quite frankly I am suffering from racial fatigue as an American Indian the last 2 weeks from reading Thanksgiving messages that avoid the elephant in the room this time of year.
I realize Thanksgiving is a complex holiday for some cloaked in a dominant message of gratitude and celebration of family and friends from the lens of white supremacy and privilege. But the truth of the matter is any Thanksgiving message that ignores the pain of Indigenous communities whose stolen land these observance occur on, continues the invisibility of millions of Native people whose ancestors extended the right hand of fellowship to white people, only to have that generosity met with racism, colonialism, mass genocide, ethnic cleansing, almost complete assimilation and displacement from their culture.
You and your organization have benefited from these atrocities that have provided you sustenance and income. Would it be too much of an ask to reckon with the reality of this western/Eurocentric ideology that has benefited from these hate crimes?
I will admit as an Indigenous person, I have enabled these conditions by not speaking my truth to this injustice in a consistent manner. I realize that my humble words do nothing to alleviate this painful shame we have caused my people. In the spirit of moving forward, don’t you think it is time to unlearn, deseed and banish these practices that perpetuate racism, colonialization, oppression and cultural appropriation.
Could we at least move forward by stepping into our imperfect perfection by starting this discussion?
Hi Richard,
Thank you for your comment. Our team really appreciates you taking the time to bring this to our attention. This is an area where we and the mindfulness community at large need to continue to educate ourselves more and will be doing so.
Here's one article we found relevant from an instructor we work with, Rose Mina Munjee. If you, or if anyone else reading, has an article to share that is relevant, please let us know.
If you're interested in sharing more on this topic, we would be happy to explore that with you.
The Downside of Integrity, excerpt from "Bill' Baber Shop"
As the premier barbershop along the southwestern parameter service is conducted Tuesdays through Saturday. The barbershop is closed on Sunday so the barbers can attend church services saving Monday for a much-deserved day of rest.
The church on the opposite side of West Avenue conducts most of their business on Saturdays, with several settings held every Saturday evening starting at 4 Pm and lasting well into the dark evening hours. There has been some discussion as to whether the Church should even remain open on Sundays, as there are now only a few short hours of business due to the ever-diminishing levels of participation. It seems that most attendees would prefer to just ‘get it out of the way’ by attending Saturday evening, leaving Sunday as a full day to do more important things, more fun things as well.
Each Saturday morning the human beings encapsulate themselves into the tight little Confessional, revealing to the good minister sins they have committed against God, The Almighty. They count off their standard deviations in anticipation of the customary repentance so that they may once again be replicated in the usual manner the following week. After the minister’s familiar redemption blessing some of the men will shuffle across the street to visit Don for a monthly haircut.
This is where they tell the truth.
For they trust in Don, for he is a very knowledgeable man. Don is man of true integrity. This barbershop is perhaps the only place where the humans have found solace in an equal, willing to divulge their innermost thoughts.
My Webster’s Dictionary definition of the word integrity reads like a mission statement;
“Firm adherence to moral values, incorruptible; an unimpaired condition, soundness”.
For a synonym ‘honesty’ is given, where we find
“Fairness and straightforwardness of conduct, adherence to the facts, sincerity, chastity”,
And this part I like the best;
“Integrity implies trustworthiness and incorruptibility to the degree that one is ‘incapable’ of being false to a trust”
Yes, this is Don.
Don is incapable of presenting a false trust.
That’s why we love him so. We truly appreciate his veracity. That’s why business is always booming on this side of West Avenue.
We all like to converse with Don, even the most diffident among us, those that are hesitant to talk openly about them self, the ones that are so uncomfortable and uneasy speaking even with their closest friends. Don works his magic best with the ones that openly display this lack of self-confidence as he is such an amiable fellow.
And how about the ones that are a bit more talkative, the gabby, chatty loquacious ones?
Well, let’s just say that for Don they make great sparring partners.
This definition of integrity may sound like the classic description of a boy scout. But the truth doesn’t always workout that way.
And believe me, Don is no boy scout.
Oblivious to the tonal inflictions of prideful greed in our voice we Human Beings will confirm our sins to Don in search of the tiniest bit of reconciliation. For these sins, these many, many conspicuous sins are committed against our fellow Man on the Earth that God created for us to enjoy, not destroy.
Don is not one that would temper his accurately innovative thoughts and opinions squeamish in anticipation of a voluntary donation, as Don is not a wimp.
For a haircut cost what a haircut costs, but for the cost of a really good cut, who’s to say?
Gratuity is optional, always has been, always will be, on this we all agree that we should keep it that way.
But the truth, the real honest to God truth, that my friend comes at a price everyone and anyone is easily able to afford, but few, very, very few are seldom if ever willing to pay.
This is not to say that Don promotes conflict. He merely induces a spirited conversation, taking it in whatever direction it may freely flow. He’s the kind of guy that makes you think about what you’ve just said, to self-analyze your own words from your own mouth. He’s the kind of guy that stimulates one to re-enter their own thoughts in a much more pervasive manner with heart in mind to detail the particulars of their own argument.
Yes, Don is quite the verbal sparring partner.
Maybe not right away, it may even take much more than a day, but from your original solid stance you will, as Don has so solemnly advised, you will begin to stray.
Don has confided in me more than once, “Sometimes there can be little comfort in the truth”.
For Don will hold us to a much higher level of repentance than the minister, being an equal amongst many, many friends, true friends. When it comes to barbershop sins, unlike the big bulging church across the street, Don remembers.
You’re not allowed to keep repeating the same old sins, because there’s never been true forgiveness for the keep-repentant-sinner.
In a real barbershop one must actually make a decent, an honest attempt at being a better Human Being gravitating to lesser sins not greater ones, and that’s the ‘why’ in ‘what’ forgiveness has always meant.
You’ll need to add a few fresh ones to recoil your heart from your soul each month. Or is it your soul from your heart? I always seem to get those mixed up. I’ll have to ask Don.
When we talk to Don telling Don the truth, we must beware. One needs to be forewarned. There’s a small plaque on the wall the size of my hand many read and much like me don’t fully understand:
When you capture a star from the sky,
Place it on your friends’ heart.
You will see the truth.
The difficult part is not the grasping of the star,
But rather having the ability to withstand this truth.
Don will explain this riddle of Life in terms of integrity as the “Star” is a question that you are dieing to know the answer to, such as “Do you love me?” “Will you be mine forever?” Or perhaps a more pertinent topic, “Are you telling me the truth?”
It could be difficult or fairly easy to ask your friend these seemingly simple questions.
Once again, there can sometimes be very little comfort in the truth.
It seems that many of the humans that visit Don are much like me, that they truly want to be somebody else, anybody, anybody at all, anybody else but them self.
We keep searching for answers to serious questions, the questions that seem to take a controlling, dominating stance in our Life. We seek out those who we perceive to hold the correct knowledge that treat all with dignity, the ones like Don, those of true integrity.
Most of the good things in Life often have a down side, slight as it may be. Even with the very best things that Life has to offer. Like with the simple details of true integrity.
Because there is a down side to integrity as well, and that my good friend, that’s the real honest to God truth!
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