In celebration of Thanksgiving and in the spirit of sharing and caring, I’m sharing five gratitude quotes that speaks to me as a person.
We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in South Africa, not the way it is done in the US at least. We’ve caught on to the whole Black Friday and Cyber Monday tradition. Which, if we’re being honest, is pretty sad because it does not go hand in hand with thanksgiving!
Even though we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving as a holiday, our local church has a thanksgiving sermon, every year, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
One of the things that we do during this sermon, is to jot down a couple of thoughts of gratitude, along with the things we hope and dream about for the coming year.
The exercise consists of two sections
1.) The things we are grateful for at the moment, specific to the current year, and
2.) We make a note of the things we are trusting God for in the year to come.
The last part of the tradition is to include your name and email address, in order for the church to scan and email, the note that you make this year, in a year from now.
In other words, earlier this month, I received an email from the church with the 2017 Thanksgiving service’s thoughts of gratitude.
This year I did a little search in my inbox and archives. I realized that I not only had my thoughts from 2017 – but I had saved the thoughts I had in 2015 and 2016 as well.
Last year I took a photo of the words I had written down, with the intention to rewrite them in my bullet journal as an easy way to refer to them throughout the course of the year.
Naturally, I didn’t get around to it! This, along with the fact that it is healthy for us to live a life of gratitude was reason enough for this post.
As an added bonus, I am including a free printable for us to refer to in a year from now!
There is beauty in comparing the thoughts from 2015, 2016 and 2017. I could see God’s faithful hand in my life. I could clearly see answered prayers and God’s protective hand over me and the boy over the past couple of years.
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God…”
Phil 4:6
Philippians 4:6, suddenly were’s simply words I have memorised and prayed over our lives – I could clearly see the effect of these words!
The Gratitude Quotes:
Have you noticed how many quotes there are about gratitude? The sheer number of quotes using the keywords, gratitude, gratefulness and thankfulness – had me feeling a little overwhelmed! This year, specifically – the below gratitude quotes spoke to me, made me think and left me inspired.
1. “When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around” – Willie Nelson.
Related Blog posts: My 2015 | Gratitude
2. “The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see.” – Mary Davis
3. “Stop now! Enjoy the moment, it’s now or never.” – Maxime Lagace
Related Blog posts: In 2015 I learned the meaning of gratitude
4. “Learn to be thankful for what you already have, while you pursue all that you want.” – Jim Rohn.
Related Blog posts: Gratitude Challenge #GratitudeChallenge30
5. “Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.” – Henry Ward Beecher.
The whole experience made me realize, that I have focused way too little on gratitude in my self-reflections guide from the past! With that in mind, I recreated my self-reflections guide from 2017. 2018’s aim is to incorporate a strong gratitude component.
Download the free gratitude worksheet, by clicking on the below link.
Unlike last year, I am also, simplifying the review process. This year I’ll be spreading the information over the course of a couple of weeks, instead of jumping at you all in one go!
When you download and complete the free worksheet – feel free to share your moment of gratitude in Social Media! Tag me in your post by using the following handle. @thecuriouswildflower in both Instagram and Facebook or @alet202 on Twitter.
Count your rainbows, not your thunderstorms. Alyssa Knight