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 24I 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!!photo cred pexels.com (rawpixel.com)