The holiday season is upon us. Beginning with Thanksgiving, we’re entering the time of year when we’re encouraged to stop and consider all we have to be grateful for in our lives. Embracing an attitude of gratitude can help to increase joy and relieve stress, but that may not always be easy. It’s normal to have a wide range of feelings that can impact your ability to feel gratitude and joy. Although for some, the holidays bring back treasured memories, happiness, and anticipation; others may feel stress, disappointment, and loss. 

Join us on November 20th at 2pm for a presentation “Building a Positive Mindset Through Gratitude”  by local clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Bracamonte as she shows you how your thoughts, feelings, and actions interact with one another and impact your daily experience. Tips will be shared to help you to mindfully avoid negative thinking traps, create a positive mindset, and embrace a more joyous experience through the holidays and beyond.

Practicing gratitude  is one of the simplest, most powerful and accessible ways to live a more joyful fulfilling life, regardless of what is going on in your life or the world. Research has demonstrated that feelings of gratitude are associated with better health, sounder sleep, greater happiness and kinder actions toward others. 

Taking time each day to identify a few things you feel grateful for has been proven to improve mood and feelings of well-being.  Performing simple acts of gratitude in our daily lives such as showing appreciation and returning kindness  can help elevate energy levels, optimism, and productivity and has long-term mental health/emotional benefits. 

Here are some inspirational reads on the theme of gratitude that are available to borrow with your Livingston Library card.

Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes : Odes to Being Alive by James Parker

Our politics are broken; our world is melting; the next catastrophe looms. Enter James Parker, who for years now has been writing odes of appreciation on subjects from the seemingly minor (“Ode to Naps”) to the unexpected (“Ode to Giving People Money”) to the seemingly minor, unexpected, and hyperspecific (“Ode to Running in Movies”). Each ode is an exercise in gratitude. Each celebrates the permanent susceptibility of everyday humdrum life to dazzling saturations of divine light: the squirrel in the street, the crying baby, the misplaced cup of tea. Parker’s odes are songs of praise, but with a decent amount of complaining in there, too: a human ratio of moans. Varied in length but unified in tone, mostly in prose, sometimes toppling into verse, the odes range across music, movies, literature, psychology, and beyond, all through the lens of Parker’s personal history. Gathered together, they form an accidental how-to guide to honoring your own experience-and to finding your own odes.

Gratitude by Oliver Sacks

During the last few months of his life, Sacks wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death. Together, these four essays form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and to gratitude for the gift of life.

Gratitude Daily: 21 Days to More Joy and Less Stress by Nataly Kogan

21 short, fun lessons that you can do anytime and anywhere, featuring practices such as “Gratitude Zoom,” “Tiny Miracles,” and “Gratitude for Imperfection.” In each 10-15 minute lesson, you’ll not only learn how to do each practice, but why, as Nataly shares fascinating tidbits from psychology, neuroscience, and her own successes.

The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life by Janice Kaplan

Getting advice at every turn from psychologists, academics, doctors, and philosophers, Kaplan brings readers on a smart and witty journey to discover the value of appreciating what you have. Relying on both amusing personal experiences and extensive research, Kaplan explores how gratitude can transform every aspect of life, including marriage and friendship, money and ambition, and health and fitness. 

Gratitude : Why Giving Thanks is Key to Our Well-Being by Cornelius Plantinga

Celebrating the role of gratitude in our lives, Plantinga makes the case that it is the very key to understanding our relationships with one another, the world around us, and God.

I Want to Thank You : How a Year of Gratitude Can Bring Joy and Meaning in a Disconnected World by Gina Hamadey Bergman

Hamadey chronicles how twelve months spent writing 365 thank you notes to strangers, neighbors, family, and friends shifted her perspective – and why developing a lasting active gratitude practice can make you a happier person, heal complicated relationships, and reconnect you with the people you love — all with just a little bit of bravery at the mailbox.

Leading with Gratitude : Eight Leadership Practices for Extraordinary Business Results by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

Showing gratitude to employees is the easiest, fastest, most inexpensive way to boost performance. Gostick and Elton introduce eight simple ways managers can show employees they are valued. They supplement their insights and advice with stories of how many of today’s most successful leaders–such as Alan Mulally of Ford and Hubert Joly of Best Buy–successfully incorporated gratitude into their leadership styles.

The Lives We Actually Have : 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days by Kate Bowler

Authors Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie reveal how every day is worth blessing–even Tuesdays. In a world that demands relentless perfection, they offer creative, faith-based blessings that center gratitude and hope without making light of our real, messy lives.

The Power of Thank You : Discover the Joy of Gratitude by Joyce Meyer

Bible teacher Meyer encourages you to have a gracious heart that guides your daily actions and reactions. Living with an attitude of gratitude along with regularly expressing your thanks not only helps you fully realize how God is working in your life, it lifts your burdens and gives you a new perspective. Actively practicing thanksgiving is the key to finding freedom from bitterness and failure, which leads to embracing the best that God has for you. 

Thank You : A Little Book of Gratitude : How Saying Thanks Can Change Your Life by Lois Blyth

Here you will find practical and conscious ways to embrace gratitude that offer lasting meaning, from creative ways to turn a simple thank you into a heartfelt gift to strategies to help us to see life with brighter eyes. Try keeping a gratitude journal, whether on paper or using an app, or making a gratitude altar. Discover meditations to end your day on a grateful note and to help you find your way back to thankfulness when times are hard. You will soon find that gratitude becomes a way of life and will reap the benefits, both emotional and physical.

Wake Up Grateful : The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted by Kristi Nelson

With questions for reflection, daily exercises, and perspective prompts, this book promises profound personal change through the practice of taking nothing for granted.

–Archana, Adult Services & Acquisitions Librarian