GRATITUDE

GRATITUDE & YOU

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VOLUNTEER

Dayton Price was involved in a tragic accident while traveling with his golf team, his take on the accident, grief and loss, gratitude for life and his come back to Golf. Canadians Dayton Price & Hayden Underhill were survivors of a horrific car crash in Texas that took nine lives, including seven members of the University of the Southwest golf team they were part of. The team was driving after a round of golf in Texas when a man with Methamphetamine in his system crossed the center lane and hit the team bus head on killing 9 of the 11 involved. Dayton tells the story of his golf carer, the accident, his injuries, recovery and his plans going forward to become a professional golfer.

What Is Gratitude?

The definition of being grateful is the quality of being thankful; your readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.

Gratitude is when you feel thankful for the good things in your life. This could be stuff people often take for granted, like having a place to live, food, clean water, friends, and family. Gratitude is taking a moment to reflect on how lucky you are when something good happens, whether it's small or big.

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You can use lots of words to describe feelings of gratitude: thankful, fortunate, humbled, appreciative, and blessed.

Here's why gratitude is important — and some ideas for how to be more grateful.

Why Does Gratitude Matter?

Being grateful feels nice, and making a habit of it is good for you. Like other positive emotions, feeling grateful on a regular basis can have a big effect on your life.

Gratitude can:

Boost your ability to learn and make smart decisions.
Balance out negative emotions. People who often feel grateful are happier, less stressed, and less depressed. Rather than focusing on what you don't have, notice what you do have.
Lead to caring actions. When you’re grateful for someone's kindness, you may be more likely to be nice in return. Your gratitude can also have a positive effect on someone else's actions. Thanking people can make it more likely they'll do something thoughtful again.
Help you build better relationships. When you feel and express heartfelt gratitude and respect to people in your life, it creates loving bonds. It also builds trust and helps you feel closer.

When you make gratitude a habit, you become more aware of good things as they happen.

How Can I Make Gratitude a Habit?

Sometimes feelings of gratitude happen without you expecting them. But you can also create them by looking for things you appreciate. Each day, pay attention to stuff you're glad to have in your life so it becomes a habit. Slow down and notice what's around you. For example: "Wow, the sunset is beautiful today. What an incredible world I live in," or, "There's Sara. It was so nice of her to help me yesterday."

You might not always feel positive and want to practice gratitude. But if you're feeling down, that's exactly when you should do it for a lift.

Here are some ways to make gratitude part of your life:

Say thank-you often. Look for reasons to thank people and then do it. This helps you be more grateful and makes them feel good too.
Start a positive journal. Write about stuff you’re grateful for — the entries can be brief. You can do this at bedtime each day. Try to find at least three good things that happened to you. Soon you’ll start to notice more positive things about the people in your life and yourself.
Make a gratitude jar. To help remind you to be more thankful, decorate a jar (or box) and put it where you can see it. Each day, write what you’re grateful for on slips of paper and add them to the jar.
Write a letter. Writing a letter to someone you value can help you practice gratitude in your relationships. You can give it to that person or not. Either way, the letter helps you appreciate the important people in your life.
Find a gratitude buddy. It can help to start a healthy habit with another person, so have someone join you in being thankful. Tell a family member or friend three things you’re grateful for, then ask them to do the same.

DOWNLOAD YOUR GRATITUDE JOURNAL

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our FREE 21-Day Family Gratitude Challenge. Make this challenge a part of your night routine or family dinner time for the next 21 days (that's how long it takes to build a habit).

Gratitude Builds Self Confidence

Children who feel they are taken care of benefit from self-confidence. You can teach your child to understand the importance of basic needs and why it’s important to be thankful for them.

1. Talk to your child about necessities like food, shelter, water, clothing, health, and safety to help them to see an abundance they may otherwise overlook.

2. If your family can, volunteer time at a food kitchen.

3. Make toiletry or snack kits to give out to homeless individuals.

Another way to reframe the concept of gratitude is by giving children a better understanding of the people who keep them safe and healthy. A child who feels anxious can garner strength by learning about safety and the work of front-line workers.

4. Thank you cards for frontline and other essential workers are a wonderful way to connect your child to their community.

5. Spend a family day taking an online CPR/first aid class.

6. Create a family safety plan, which your family can update every year during the holiday season.

Social-Emotional Benefits of Gratitude

Gratitude activities hone into the here and now, promoting a sense of belonging. During COVID, gratitude activities help children feel less isolated.

7. Help your child find a program where they can sign up to be someone’s pen pal.

8. Have your child call an older family member and pretend to be a reporter writing a story on their life.

9. Family trees are a concrete way for children to see the interwoven family connections and decrease feelings of isolation.

Gratitude helps children develop an understanding of their own culture and family history. Children who know more about the world beyond their home can better identify their strengths and stretch to meet new goals.

10. Help your child connect to their local history by reaching out to museums and universities. They are a great places to seek out information.

11. Cultural groups like indigenous families and families of color can promote resiliency through reteaching their accounts, which have often been left out of history books. It also highlights the importance of documenting family histories.

12. Have your child create an art project about their family history.

Children who focus on gratitude feel a sense of worth and value beyond financial gain. They also learn to see positive change from direct action — they will not only see the change, but they will also feel that vital sense of accomplishment.

13. Have your child go out and pick up trash at your local park or in the neighborhood or collect as many cans and bottles as they can.

14. Take your child to your local recycling center and help them count how many bottles and cans they turn in. That number is concrete proof of their ability to affect change, all on their own.

Gratitude Teaches Coping Skills Building

Teaching children gratitude can build up their toolbox of coping skills. Gratitude journaling becomes a vital tool for helping children see their failures as opportunities for growth. When the power of "not good enough" meets "not yet," children learn the real power of resiliency.

Gratitude activities embrace creativity allowing children to express gratitude through art, journaling, and oral storytelling. Creativity through hobbies and passions can become one of the most vital coping skills children can learn.

15. Discuss some favorite family stories or memories used to encourage others to keep going when life is rough.

16. For special dinners, children can create a gratitude tree by making a tree trunk from paper. Family members can then write down what they’re thankful for on paper leaves. With planning, out-of-town family can even virtually share in this experience.

17. Have your child keep a gratitude journal, where they record their daily highs and lows. There will be days when it’s a struggle to find a high, but this is where learning to embrace a growth mindset comes through — a previous low is now a high because it's a mistake they can learn from.

Gratitude Helps Children See the Big Picture

Gratitude helps children understand the interconnectedness of the world. Just as it helps highlight food insecurities and homelessness, it also shows how every person can make a difference. Assisting children to identify their strengths in changing the world provides hope. Children who feel they make a difference and live by the growth mindset set goals and are motivated for change.

18. Take gratitude trips in the neighborhood to find the joys nearby — what do they see that makes them feel happy?

19. Create art to take your local firehouse.

20. Have children donate games or crafting kits to a local nursing home.

It’s Okay to Embrace the Little Things

Before jumping headfirst into thankfulness activities, take some time to evaluate what you want your children to learn. If this has been an especially rough year for everyone, it may not be the best time to start trying to rethink what it means to be grateful — sometimes, it’s enough just to be grateful for making it through to the other side. Use this season as an opportunity to jumpstart conversations and actions around appreciation for one another and how grateful you are to have each other as family.

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