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Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. I appreciate its inclusivity, its celebration of bounty, and the opportunity to spend hours at the dinner table with loved ones when the underlying trend is a focus on gratitude.
Thursday will be the first time in decades that we will not host a Thanksgiving meal. The reason is strange and needs some explanation. Back in March, shortly after I broke my leg and was unable to walk, we moved from the home we had loved for nearly 20 years to a new home in a new city. On our second night in our new house, I was the exact opposite of Thanksgiving.
Honestly, I feel sorry for myself. I can’t get around or navigate around all the boxes, bits and bags in our new home. I can’t find anything in my chaotic life and family, and I’m not sure how or when things will turn around.
I took a deep breath and reminded myself that difficult times don’t last forever. We’ll get our house and live together. I’ll find all the necessities – and then I’ll walk again.
Even so, I know that anticipating something fun will lift my spirits. With my exhausted husband nearly asleep next to me, I started looking on my phone for a trip I’d been thinking about for months. We’ve talked several times, but there’s so much up in the air that we don’t think it would be a good idea to book a major trip.
My hesitation is over. Within minutes, I had booked that trip and told my soon-to-be sober husband that we were heading to Istanbul and Greece in November. He murmured, “Sounds good.”
I’m not sure what to expect in 2022, but I know I need to focus on some interesting things. My strategy worked. Bright things on the horizon help. My favorite bright things are travel and adventure.
The only glitch with my quickly booked trip came a few days later when I realized our trip had caused us to miss Thanksgiving with friends and family. So, we’ll be celebrating a few days later. I use this opportunity to remind everyone that gratitude does not happen in a day. It’s a state of mind.
A growing body of research shows that gratitude can help us in many ways—emotionally, even physically. For the past decade, I’ve been following research by UC Davis psychology professor Robert Emmons. He is a leading expert on gratitude and defines gratitude as having two parts.
Emmons says the first part of gratitude is what he calls “the affirmation of the good”—basically by paying attention to their lives and focusing on being grateful, people can notice the blessings and good things around them. Emmons says the second part of gratitude is more external, and it’s recognizing that this source of kindness comes from outside of oneself. We receive gifts from others or from higher powers, destiny or nature.
According to research compiled by Psychology Today, the benefits of gratitude are many. Gratitude can help build better relationships, help improve physical health, improve mental health, increase empathy, reduce aggression, improve sleep, increase self-esteem, and increase mental strength.
“In the history of ideas, there have been few grateful critics,” Giacomo Bono, Emmons, and Michael McCullough write in their research“It is virtuously pleasurable because experiencing it not only uplifts the person experiencing it, but also enlightens the person to whom it is addressed. But gratitude is often considered a virtue, not just a pleasure, This fact also shows that it is true that gratitude does not always come naturally or easily. Gratitude must and can be cultivated. By cultivating the virtue, one seems to get the joy of gratitude for free, along with all the other attendant benefits.
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