Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love all the good food, as well as the 4 day weekend providing extra time to cozy up and connect with family and friends. I also dig leftovers, and sitting in front of a fire, two more divine Thanksgiving treats.

Mostly though, I like Thanksgiving because at its root, literally, it’s a time to give thanks. It ritualizes gratitude, a practice I whole-heartedly believe in as a way to increase happiness, contentment and joy in my life.

I follow Seth Godin’s blog, and yesterday he shared a Thanksgiving Reader that I downloaded and plan to share at my family gathering next week. It contains quotes, poems, reflections, and questions about gratitude to consider over your Thanksgiving meal. To me, it seems like a valuable and easy solution if you’ve always wanted a more gratitude focused Thanksgiving, and don’t know where to start. It’s really well done, I’m going to try to use a few parts of it at least. I hope you do too.

As we near the end of the year, I personally want to recommit to my gratitude practice, and every night before I go to sleep, write down 5 things I’m grateful for in my favorite little journal. I truly am so grateful for the life I have, so why not spend 2 minutes reflecting on that every day? It’s incredibly powerful “medicine.” It makes me look for, notice, and absorb those mini moments of ecstasy throughout my day, making me happier overall. (Try it with me if you can!)

Most of all, I want to THANK YOU. I’m so grateful for you: my readers, clients, colleagues, friends and family who share your love with me and enable me to be doing the Integrative Acupuncture and Coaching work that makes me deeply happy and fulfilled. I hope this newsletter brings a spot of sunshine or inspiration to your inbox each month. That’s always my intention.

Please leave me a comment about what you are most grateful for. Or let me know you’ll be joining me on my year end gratitude quest that I mentioned above! I really love hearing from you.