You may be Forgetting Gratitude for the Most Important Person in Your Life

Take Pen to Paper: Edition 61

Susan G.S. Abel

Nov 23, 2023

Happy Thanksgiving Friends!

Let’s dive right in. We are all busy this time of year.

In this newsletter:

The first person you should be grateful for.
Why is self-gratitude necessary?
I needed to check my gratitude.

Do you express gratitude for the most important person in your life?

When expressing gratitude this season, don’t forget to be grateful for yourself.

That’s right. Gratitude for yourself is not selfish; it’s necessary.

We are very quick to judge and compare ourselves to others. Judging and comparing, don’t consider your individual strengths and weaknesses. You need to be grateful for just the way you are.

Every week in art class, I’m amazed at the creations we each produce. You can’t help but compare because each class member brings a different perception and skill level to their work. No one’s is perfect. Even the art teacher, who everyone else sees as the role model, comments on how she could improve hers.

When I look at all the creations in class, no two are alike. Yet, each has something perfect about it.

“The things that make me different are the things that make me.” - A.A. Milne

As people, we are the same as the art we create in class—each unique, with different strengths and weaknesses.

Gratitude helps you accept your uniqueness.

Self-gratitude is necessary.

Self-gratitude does more than increase your acceptance of your unique self.

Being grateful for who we are and where we are in life reflects in everything we do. It requires us to know ourselves.

“The longest journey is the journey inwards.” -Dag Hammarskjöld

If we know our strengths and weaknesses, and our likes and dislikes, it becomes easier to help ourselves and others.

Self-gratitude:

Keeps you motivated.
Makes you aware of your progress toward your goals.
Helps you define your starting place towards improvement.
Reminds you of your accomplishments, even the small ones.

Self-gratitude helps you be the beginning of chain reactions that move from you to others by:

Preventing you from projecting negativity onto those around you.
Contributing toward better decisions for yourself that also affect those around you.
Making it easier for others to be around you giving you opportunities to help them.

Perhaps most importantly, if we accept ourselves the way we are, we move toward accepting others as they are. Acceptance moves us towards love, imperfections and weaknesses included.

Do I express gratitude for myself?

When this topic came to mind, I wondered if I was discussing a topic I had not experienced. I had no memory of writing, “I am grateful for me” in the past two years.

I went back and read my gratitude journal. I discovered I was doing much better than I thought.

I found statements such as the following:

I am grateful I can show and laugh at my mistakes.
I am grateful for my ability to accept that I can’t change others.
I am grateful for the tolerance I have for small things I don’t like but have no consequence for me.

Without realizing it, I have been writing down specific self-gratitude while keeping a gratitude journal.

It turns out that practicing self-gratitude was easier than I thought. It’s something you can do too.

Take a moment to reflect on yourself. Photo by S.G.S. Abel

7 Days, 7 Thoughts on Gratitude and Good:

It’s not every day that I see my reflection in a puddle on my walks. I have come to value my walks as a time to reconnect with me. Making it a no-tech walk becomes my personal “Camino de Santiago” or the “Kumano Kodo Trail.” (My friends who have walked those may disagree, and that’s OK.)🚶
A quote: “Until we can feel grateful for the many gifts that make us who we are we cannot make decisions that honor our integrity and wellbeing.” - Kerry Howell
I can’t help but share a post of Matt Hogan’s about looking inward. Check it out and subscribe to his one-minute posts. They are well worth your time.
Everything is Alive is a creative podcast with a quirky sense of humor and trivia you would never think to look up. The episode “Mirror, Mirror” asks you to consider yourself. To listen to the podcast, scroll to the bottom of the linked web page. This podcast usually runs around 30 minutes. 🪞
My journaling friend, Adam Ullrich, makes a perfect statement about knowing yourself. “The thing we need to do can be the most elusive. It is a belief we hold that negates our own call to action. Finding it requires new experiences and uncomfortable questions. When you see it you’ll know. Decide to act.” Adam has a newsletter about journaling that you can subscribe to here.
This article outlines five strategies to cultivate self-gratitude. You will not be surprised to find my favorite strategy on the list - a gratitude journal! 🙏
I will lead by example, ending with saying I am grateful for myself.

Thank you for reading. I am grateful to have you as a reader.

💚

Susan

Regardless of your plans for this holiday week, remember that you have much to be grateful for. The life you live is someone else’s dream life. Be grateful for it as well as yourself.

Leave a comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

🎁As promised, this gift will be posted throughout November.🎁

I have created a free gratitude template for you to either:

start a gratitude practice
stretch your gratitude practice

The template is 31 topics and example sentences for gratitude. Thirty-one topics will get you through each day in any month. Isn’t November a great time to start?

I’ve said it several times, gratitude brought me more than I imagined, so it’s natural for me to recommend it.

I love having a guide and examples when I take on a new endeavor. That’s what I hope this is for any who would like to use it. There are three ways to access the template.

Access and make a copy of this Google Document

The Daily Gratitude Habit Jumpstart

Go to The Daily Gratitude Jumpstart by clicking this link https://sgsabel.gumroad.com/l/DailyGratitudeHabitJumpstart. Or enter it into your browser.
When you scroll down the page, you should see this (without my red mark):

In the “Name a fair price” box I marked in red, put the numeral “0” because this is free! You provide your email, and a copy will be sent to you to download.
You can also access Gumroad through my website, takepentopaper.com where you will find a link to the site described above.

Hopefully, I will have at least one reader try each method to make sure I did everything correctly on my end. 🤞(If using technology was a virtue, it would be greatly lacking in me.) If you have any problems, let me know.

Remember, the template is not month-specific. Use it any time.

Take Pen to Paper