Fall is my favorite season. More than any other time of year, we are encouraged to take a breath and think about all the things we’re most grateful for – friends, family and everything else that make life worth living.
Each year, friends and family describe all the things they are grateful for around Thanksgiving and I’m reminded of the power of gratitude. Gratitude can transform dark times into moments of hope. It can energize when we feel weak and calm when we feel anger.
Because my friends and family have added so much value to my life by expressing their gratitude, I want to pay it forward by sharing a few of the things that matter most to me.
In my own life, I’m most grateful for my husband and my children, for the love and support we share and for the time we get to spend together – waking up to a hot cup of coffee and snuggly sleepyheads to dancing in the kitchen or watching my kids fall over each other giggling with glee. I’m grateful to work with people I enjoy – the incredible Pivot team and clients that entrust us with their challenges.
I’m grateful to my extended family, friends and neighbors who I’m lucky have in my life. I’m grateful to my work friends and colleagues who make work something I look forward to doing.
I’m grateful to kind people – to the strangers I may never meet who grow our crops, help those in need, protect us, teach our children and make the world a better place to live.
When life overwhelms us, it’s easy to forget how lucky we really are, which is why I try to make gratitude a part of my daily routine. Right now, I’m grateful for food delivery. Tomorrow, it might be the sunshine or fall leaves. Every time I reflect on my blessings, I’m reminded to breath in the everything around me. That I have enough. My life is full of the things that I care about the most and I try to live each day as though it could be the last. Whether that means I push off a meeting and take a walk with my kids or sit down and enjoy a good meal rather than scarf something down while multitasking, it’s a reminder to slow down and remember to really live.
What are you grateful for? No matter how stressed or how busy you are, take one minute to write down three things you are grateful for in your life. I promise you’ll be thankful that you did because it’s not happiness that brings us gratitude, it’s gratitude that brings us happiness.
