The Daily Reminder – Day 25: Emotional Health + Gratitude

Okay y’all. I have to admit, I have been looking forward to this day since day 1.  When I put all 30 days of this experiment together, today was my favorite day. Every year, I attend the psychologists’ national convention to learn new things and keep myself up-to-date on the best clinical practices. In fact, as I write this, I am sitting in a hotel in California (at 4 a.m. because I woke up early to say happy first-day-of-school to my kids through Facetime!) waiting for the first day of the conference. Anyway, each year, I attend various talks about the power of positive thinking, intentional parenting and teaching practices, cultural inclusivity, and gratitude.

A couple of years ago, I attended a talk where the researcher presented data on an intervention in his therapy office where he had two groups of clients – one group who he did typical therapy with and one group that did typical therapy, but added writing one letter of gratitude a week. His data showed that those clients who wrote the letters improved significantly faster than those who did not. As I have reflected on this intervention over the years, I have also seen the power of writing about gratitude in my own life and the lives of the clients I see as well.

So today, I want for each of us to write a letter (like a hand-written letter or card) of gratitude to someone in our lives. It can be someone from recent interactions, long-time friend, whoever.

And I can’t wait to hear how this day goes for all of you!

Recap from Day 24

I am excited about how these last three weeks have been challenging me to slow down. Yesterday was a long day of traveling, but I did find myself stopping from time to time to catch a breath and focus on those moments of stillness. I really like that. It felt more natural. Like I was starting to get into the habit of slowing down that way. It actually just hit me that Steven Covey says it takes 21 days to create a new habit. Well, for me, I guess it takes 24. But at least it is starting to get there!!

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