The spirit of Thanksgiving: gratitude practices for every day

Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November, and it’s a good day to stop and think about gratitude as something you can practice all year. Done honestly, gratitude can make it easier to be kind to yourself and to forgive. It can also help you see what the hard parts of the year taught you, along with the good parts.

Gratitude when things are hard

Gratitude changes where your attention goes. When you stop to name what you appreciate, you start to notice what’s still good on a bad day. You don’t have to pretend everything is fine to do this. You can be grateful and still be grieving or angry, and both are true at once. Life isn’t perfect, and it still has moments worth noticing.

Many spiritual paths ask us to accept the whole of our lives, the hard parts included. When you look for what a difficult experience taught you, it can become a source of strength and insight.

Simple gratitude practices for daily life

Here are a few practices inspired by ayahuasca and other spiritual paths.

1. Each morning, name three things you’re grateful for before the day gets going.
2. Keep a gratitude journal. Each day, write down what you’re thankful for, including the hard moments. Writing about both helps you see your life as a whole.
3. Practice forgiveness. Gratitude and forgiveness often go together, and it’s easier to let go of resentment when you’re already looking for what’s good. Think about a hurt you’re still carrying and ask what it showed you. You can forgive someone and still keep your boundaries.
4. Take a gratitude walk. Go outside and notice what’s around you: the colors, the sounds, the smells. Time outdoors can help you feel part of something larger.
5. End the day the way you started it. Before bed, go back over the day and name three moments you’re grateful for. Often the small ones you’d normally walk past bring the most peace.

Looking back on the year

This time of year is a natural point to look at what the past months brought into your life. What were the gifts, the joyful ones and the hard ones? Each one showed you something about who you are, or where you still have growing to do.

Start with the hard moments. What did they show you about how you cope? Sometimes a difficulty turns up a strength you didn’t know you had. Sometimes it shows you a habit you’d like to change. Both are worth knowing.

Then the joyful moments. What made them matter to you? Let yourself remember them slowly, and stay with the appreciation for a minute.

Keeping it going

Gratitude can last past November. Many of us find that a habit of noticing what’s good changes what we see, and we start finding blessings we’d been walking past.

Gratitude can also soften how you see yourself and other people. Everyone’s path is different, and we still share a lot of the same experiences. This Thanksgiving, give thanks for the good moments, and for what you learned from the hard ones.

May we find strength in our challenges and joy in our blessings. From Two Birds Church, we give thanks for the road we share with you. Happy Thanksgiving.

Ayahuasca ceremonies at Two Birds Church in Anna, Texas →