What Giving Thanks is All About

As we head into the Holiday season, our minds are stressed out with everything we need to do/plan/achieve, and we never really stop to think about what we're actually grateful for. Coming from Europe, Thanksgiving is not a holiday we celebrate, so I cannot really relate to it in the sense US folks can. Nevertheless, I celebrate the fact of being grateful for everything & everyone I have in my life...isn't that something we should all be doing?

We live in a time where Holidays & celebration days are either taken for granted, or frowned upon and called "materialistic". I've been hearing how Valentine's Day is a stupid celebration invented by the media and big companies wanting to sell their products for yeeeears because "love should be celebrated everyday". And although, true, love SHOULD be celebrated everyday; do we really do that? Can we really say we celebrate everyone we love every single day? Well, if you do, kudos to you! I know I don't, and I can say the majority does not. So, where's the harm in having one day when love is celebrated everywhere in the world? Nobody is forcing you to spend a fortune on presents, everyone celebrates love in their own way :) Same goes for every other Holiday. I believe we should all celebrate them however we want, and that brings me to my topic for this article - What giving Thanks is all About

I guess it's different for everyone as everyone is grateful for different things in their lives, but the premise stays the same - giving thanks for someone/something/everyone/everything meaningful in your life. Whether it being something positive or negative (as it made you the person you are today), take a moment this Thanksgiving to dig deep into yourself and be grateful. We all go through some difficult times and staying positive is a hard task, but if we focus on what we have rather than what we do not, we can start seeing things from a different perspective. Start with something simple, like the opportunity to drink your favorite cup of coffee every morning, or spending those 5 extra minutes in bed because you set the alarm clock a bit too early...and then slowly shift to bigger things. As you continue counting your blessings, you'll see you have SO much to be grateful for :) Of course, like the 'love-should-be-celebrated-everyday-argument', we should be giving thanks everyday too, but even stopping to do it for one day in the year is a lot. And then, one day may turn into two, two may turn into three, and you just might develop a nice little weekly/monthly ritual where you stop and think about what you're grateful for :)

So, that is what giving thanks is all about, at least for me it is. Being present and aware of my blessings, making sure I treat the people I love with kindness, making sure I treat myself with kindness, acknowledging the negative situations and learning from them, spendind more time doing things that make me happy....all the while being grateful for being able to do all that...and more :)

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, my friends!

Xx,

Karla