Hello dears! As the weather turns colder, it's nice to be able to bundle up and stay inside. This is the perfect project to do indoors. The post below is by Karen Pugh of Emote Design. She's a blogger and paper crafter from the San Francisco Bay Area who enjoys helping people express themselves through words and design.
Despite the known health benefits that come from expressing gratitude, we don’t do it often enough. I’m also betting we don’t receive gratitude as much as we would like. It doesn’t make us bad people; our lack of gratitude consistency is likely due to busyness. Just like everything that is important, one has to plan to focus on sharing gratitude.
Last year, I was talking with a co-worker of mine about gratitude – how to feel it and how to express it. Our conversation quickly led us to plan the first-annual “Gratitude Month” at our workplace. We coordinated four weeks of activities throughout November that helped staff express gratitude and, not surprisingly, it was a huge hit.
Being involved in the project had a big impact on me. At the time, I had just received news that after three months of intense chemotherapy, my brother had been proclaimed cancer-free. It felt like a miracle, like the whole universe was aligned to help me feel gratitude in the deepest, most intense way possible.
As November approached this year, my friend and I decided we should go for it again and coordinate the “Second Annual Gratitude Month” at work. I’m looking forward to it, but things are different this year. We’re busier at work so we had to cut out some of the more labor-intensive activities. We also have new people helping us plan and implement everything.
But the biggest change for me is my brother is gone. As quickly as the cancer had left his body, it came right back. Some people might wonder how I could talk about gratitude having experienced a loss so painful, but what I’ve discovered is that human beings can experience more than one emotion at a time. Lucky for me, I can grieve and be grateful.
Instead of hiding from gratitude, this year I wanted to focus on a project that would help me help others express their gratitude. I decided to make a gratitude journal for each person on our planning committee. I found this great tutorial from Damask Love and used it to create a variety of notebooks so each person would have their own design.
Thank you Karen! Be sure not to miss any of Karen's wonderful paper crafts. She has some amazing Halloween decorations and I can't wait to see what she comes up with for Thanksgiving. Make sure you follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Who needs to hear kind words of gratitude from you?
soso
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