Cultivate Gratitude

It is meet that as the year closes we have holidays that turn our minds to family and friends, celebrating the blessings we’ve received and feasting on the abundance of the season.

The queen of all virtues

Gratitude is called the queen of all virtues. Indeed, gratitude fosters patience, mercy, empathy, kindness and happiness. These are virtues I’m sure we’d all like to see more of in ourselves, our family and our community.

But gratitude doesn’t necessarily come easily. We need to be daily mindful of all the goodness around us. You can cultivate this mindfulness if you:

• remember the kindnesses that have been shown to us,
• look at the world with fresh eyes
• at the end of each day recall and record all the good of the day

Remembering

Robert Emmons, a psychology professor at University of California-Davis says: “Gratitude is about remembering…Grateful people draw upon positive memories of being the recipients of benevolence, a giftedness that is neither earned nor deserved. This is why religious traditions are able to so effectively cultivate gratitude—litanies of remembrance encourage gratitude, and religions do litanies very well. The scriptures, sayings, and sacraments of faith traditions inculcate gratefulness by drawing believers into a remembered relationship with a Supreme Being and with members of their faith community.”

Foster gratitude

This month, make a special effort to put gratitude in the forefront of your thoughts and actions. Have a special  family activity or lessons that focuses on gratitude. Here’s a video to get you started. Have activities that teach children how to recognize their blessings and give thanks for the kindnesses of others. Start a gratitude journal or chart your feelings and expressions of gratitude.

Make a Thanksgiving Tree

You’ve probably seen a Thanksgiving tree (or maybe even made one yourself.) It is a tree—a drawing, picture of a tree or even a branch of a tree set into a vase—that you add leaves to throughout the month of November. On each leaf members of the family will write things that they are grateful for.