Day 5 of NOVA’s Gratitude and Appreciation Week: Future-Focused Friday!
Welcome to Day 5 of NOVA’s Gratitude and Appreciation Week. The theme for today is “Future-Focused Friday!”
Thank you, colleagues, for taking the Spring 2024 NOVA Gratitude and Appreciation Week journey. Let’s keep the spirit of the week going! We’ve shared a plethora of information and many examples of gratitude and appreciation practices. Keep in mind, though, that not every strategy works for everyone. And that’s quite all right! There’s no reason to struggle through a practice that you truly don’t enjoy or feel like you’re benefiting from. Just as there are many ways to physically exercise, there are plenty of ways to pursue gratitude.
Whichever practices you prefer, here are a few suggestions adapted from Mindful.org to help us keep the momentum of gratitude and appreciation week going.
- Five days of gratitude, down. Congratulations! It’s important to acknowledge even small wins as real successes. For more on this, read “Celebrating Is Good for Your Brain.”
- Consider a gratitude and appreciation challenge. Participating in a gratitude challenge will help you maintain your current practices. NOVA’s Office of Employee Wellness and Wellbeing’s (OEWW) collection of gratitude resources includes self-guided challenges.
- Share your gratitude practice with others. Sharing the benefits of gratitude with others builds your support system and provides accountability partners. So get your friends and family involved!
- Don’t forget to do it. Like all wellbeing habits, the most difficult part of the gratitude practice is remembering to do it. Set a reminder. Use a timer or download an app on your phone to track your gratitude on the go.
- Build gratitude and appreciation into a habit with habit stacking. The scientifically proven concept of “habit stacking” is one of the best ways to automate your gratitude practice. The idea behind habit stacking is simple: incorporate a new behavior into your daily schedule by “stacking it” on top of an existing habit. Attaching a new behavior to something you already do regularly leverages the momentum of your established behaviors to more seamlessly incorporate the new ones.
Use Future-Focused Friday as the spark to energize your ongoing gratitude and appreciation practice. For more information and suggestions, visit the growing collection of gratitude resources curated by the OEWW for this spring’s Gratitude and Appreciation Week. Feel free to share additional resources that you have found to be especially impactful. Email your additions to employeewellbeing@nvcc.edu using the subject line “Impactful Gratitude Practices.”
Submitted by:
Dahlia Henry-Tett, Chief Wellness Officer (CWO), employeewellbeing@nvcc.edu