Gratitude in Two Minutes

Thanksgiving is approaching, and preparations for the festivities are in progress in many of our homes. Just as you prepare your home and hearth, we invite you to prepare your heart to celebrate your blessings, two minutes at a time.

This activity was originally spotted on the EGADideas website. Gather your people (you can also do it alone if you’d prefer), and give each person a piece of paper and something to write with. Set a timer for two minutes, and write down as many things you are grateful for as you can think of. Limit yourself to one or two words for each item.

The original version of this activity has a competitive aspect to it – you compare lists and see who has the most unique items on their list. But consider, instead, competing against yourself. Repeat this activity between now and Thanksgiving and see if you can come up with more items each time. You can also challenge yourselves to grow your lists in other ways, or even spend one day’s two-minute window writing in detail about one of the items you came up with on a previous day.

As you become more invested in growing your list, you might find yourself spending more time thinking about your blessings, mentally scrolling through the things you are grateful for in anticipation of the next time you’ll need to access them quickly. Take some time to notice how the depth and breadth of your list grows as well, and how your feelings of gratitude grow along with it. And when this season of Thanksgiving is over, we hope it will be a little easier for you and the people you love to call up those feelings, even when things are hard.

What are you feeling grateful for right now? Share some of your list with us on Facebook or Instagram.