Are you grateful?
With burn out, mental health, and the great resignation making headlines consistently, gratitude might offer one solution.
Thanksgiving is here already, we can hardly believe it. However, it is a good reminder to practice and show gratitude. Slow down for yourself, maybe start the day with a personal gratitude list. It is also a great time to celebrate the hard work of students and volunteers, administration, classified, and certified staff.
As leaders in education, we often are focused on how we can help others, but it is just as important to think first about how we are taking care of ourselves. Research has demonstrated the impact of gratitude on mental health and wellbeing, and offers one easy tool to start the day.
Tim Ferriss uses ‘five morning rituals to win the day’ which includes a Five Minute Journal template. Three things you are grateful for, what would make the day great, and three affirmations. I find it helpful to have prompts for the gratitude lists to evolve. Below are a few resources to help get you started.
If you need help with more ideas, please feel free to contact us!
Gratitude Prompts
- The Power of Gratitude: 30 Gratitude Journal Prompts by Sharon Martin
- 50 Daily Gratitude Journal prompts to help you notice the good in your life by Diary of a Journal Planner
- 101 Gratitude Journal Prompts for Daily Thankfulness by Sarah Kristenson
Resources:
Ferriss, Tim. (n.d.). “5 Morning rituals that help me win the day.” https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/5-morning-rituals-that-help-me-win-the-day-july2018.pdf
Martin, Sharon. (2017. Oct 31). The Power of Gratitude: 30 Gratitude Journal Prompts. https://www.livewellwithsharonmartin.com/the-power-of-gratitude-30-days-of-gratitude-journal-prompts/
Diary of a Journal Planner.( 2021, Feb 25). 50 Daily Gratitude Journal prompts to help you notice the good in your life. https://diaryofajournalplanner.com/daily-gratitude-journal-prompts/
Kristenson, Sarah. (2022, April 27). 101 Gratitude Journal Prompts for Daily Thankfulness. https://www.happierhuman.com/gratitude-journal-prompts/
As conversations develop around Thanksgiving and Indigenous Peoples Day, the district may consider implementing a land acknowledgement.
“Indigenous land acknowledgment is an effort to recognize the Indigenous past, present, and future of a particular location and to understand our own place within that relationship. Usually, land acknowledgments take the form of written and/or verbal statements. It’s becoming common to see land acknowledgments delivered at conferences, community gatherings, places of worship, concerts and festivals.” – Native Governance Center
Depending on where your district is on it’s equity journey, the district can get started by researching the indigenous people to whom the land belongs. Click here for more information.
Native Governance Center. (2019, Oct 22). A guide to indigenous land acknowledgment. https://nativegov.org/news/a-guide-to-indigenous-land-acknowledgment/