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    • Nov 19, 2018
    • 2 min read

Are you really thankful?

Happy early Thanksgiving.

First of all, I am thankful for you. You get a lot of emails and you choose to read mine. Thanks for your support, friendship, connections, and more.

Second, I have a challenge for you this Thanksgiving.

Are you really thankful?

With Thanksgiving this week, it is easy for us to think or say what we are thankful for, but the effort gets short-sided. In the end, you lose out.

I want to encourage you to journal for 15-minutes (or go longer) about what you are thankful for, so you can reach greater depths.

Here is why:

Normal and lukewarm way:

When I say or think what I am thankful for it looks like this:

  1. I say to myself I am thankful for my wife because she is pretty, supportive, awesome.

  2. Then say I am thankful for my kids because they obey, are healthy, and funny.

  3. I am thankful for my job and my mentors.

  4. Thankful for my clients.

  5. Then I get bored and turn on the car radio and go about my day.

However, when I sit down and write about it, much greater depths of gratitude are reached.

You actually fall back in love with those people in your life. You may even get a little emotional.

New and life-giving way:

When I sit down and write, it starts to go a lot deeper like this:

  1. I write how I am thankful for my wife’s forgiveness, her eyes, her grace, her hospitality, her laugh, and the list goes on.

  2. Thankful for my kid’s hearts, their work ethic, their childlike faith, how one daughter wrote an encouragement note to another student, another daughter got compliments on her skills and character at a recent convention

  3. God’s provision at work. I even list out the new connections, the new speaking opportunities.

  4. I list out client transformations and stories

  5. My mentors and how they speak into my life

  6. I even ended up listing some random encounters I had with people that were fruitful, like the conversation with a guy at the Austin, TX airport which I will share in future weeks

See the difference?

Being intentional about your giving of thanks will open your eyes to the beauty around you!

Happy early Thanksgiving!

Enjoy your 15-minute gratitude session this week. Please share any fun breakthroughs!

Thank you for reading.

Cory

Please join me to receive more tips I share with clients/friends: www.corymcarlson.com/join-me

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