Make 2020 the Year of Gratitude

Special thank you to my wife for this amazing and inspiring guest post! Here’s to a great 2020!

It’s January. Time for a New Year’s resolution. Many of us have been practicing this tradition of vowing to make a change when we switch from one calendar year to another. It’s a time to start anew, to look toward the future and what we want to accomplish. My New Year’s resolution is to make 2020 the year of gratitude.

To be grateful is to be appreciative and thankful for what one has. Too many times we look at what we don’t have instead of focusing on what we do have. I am well aware that every one of us is unique and has different circumstances, but I believe most of us have things we can be grateful for.

I can be a bit pessimistic and look for the worst-case scenario. It serves me well when I am planning an event and must think of everything that could go wrong, but translating this type of thinking into my everyday personal life can be draining. I don’t know why I default to this negative way of thinking (possibly because I have programmed it in myself from years of practice), but I am going to make a change in 2020 and practice gratitude.

What do I have to lose?

Or should I say, what do I have to gain?!

How will I do this?

Every day, I will think about or write about good things I have in my life and things I am grateful for. Often we abandon our resolutions when they become too hard to accomplish. I don’t want to commit to writing 20 things a day that I am grateful for – this may work for some people, but it would be monotonous for me. If I feel like writing, I will write. Some days, I may just want to think or meditate. Regardless of the form, I will practice gratitude every day so it becomes commonplace.

As 2020 progresses, I may include other ways to practice gratitude. The more benefits I see, the more I may want to keep growing and that could involve more techniques. Or maybe I will get so much out of simply writing and thinking freeform about gratitude that I won’t need to add more. The goal is to simply practice gratitude, and I don’t know what forms that will take. Time will tell, and I will see what works for me.

If you scour the internet, you can find plenty of benefits for practicing gratitude so I won’t give you a laundry list here. I think that my year of practicing gratitude will make me a happier and more optimistic person, and I welcome that change.

Again, time will tell, but the hope of what I could gain (happiness and optimism) is worth the investment.

So here’s to making 2020 the year of gratitude!