Just Skip It This Year

You should skip Thanksgiving this year if you are a grumbler, complainer, or a generally negative person. After all, you’ll just be a hypocrite. Why would you celebrate a day that you don't believe in? If your modus operandi is to look for what you think is wrong and voice it, just forget the day. Everyone will be looking at you like, “What’s she doing here?”

Now if you are wondering if this post is written for you…just check with a friend or two :-).

Seriously, Thanksgiving isn’t a day. If it's just a day, it's meaningless. Thanksgiving is a lifestyle. I know the term “thanksliving" is lame. But what if you really did it? Lived each day with constant thoughts and expressions of gratitude. Think about what your life would be like.

When you learn to live that way, everything changes. Everything becomes more enjoyable and more meaningful: your job, school, your time at home, being at church, hanging with friends.

Every one of those things are miserable events for some people. And every one of them are gratifying for others. The one difference is gratitude. It’s gratitude that makes almost everything enjoyable. Thankful people find meaning in every aspect of their lives. Whiners and complainers find little meaning in anything and live their lives lacking contentment and fulfillment.

In fact, one recent study — a study with real scientific data reviewed by peers — identified the single greatest ingredient in happy people. Happy people regularly express gratitude. And it’s not that our happiness makes us grateful. It’s our gratitude that makes us happy. Even unhappy people who express gratitude become happy.

So don’t just let this be a day. Make this become your lifestyle.

In fact, try it now. Express gratitude in a meaningful way to a dozen people in the next couple of hours. See what happens.

“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18 ESV).