It's gratiTUESDAY or gratiTWOSDAY (all puns intended!). 
#gratitudeGRAVY 5

This next practice will take just 2-minutes and is a happiness game-changer. It comes from Harvard-trained happiness researcher, Shawn Achor.

Gratitude Practice #5
Today's practice is to start your Tuesday (yes, first thing) with writing a 2-minute thank you email or text to someone in your world.

No frills. Nothing fancy. The only requirement is that you express gratitude, appreciation or praise to the other person for something specific.

It doesn't have to be about anything too significant to make a big difference in their day (and yours).

According to Shawn, the best results come from doing this practice at least 3 times a week, but for #gratitudegravy, start with Tuesdays, then decide if you want to up your frequency to daily or 3-times a week.

After you read about its health benefits (below), you might be extra motivated with this one.

Not only does it have a...

#GratitudeGRAVY day 11

Several years ago, I was at a yoga retreat and one of my favorite teachers Patty Zimmer, said grace before we ate a meal together.

I'm not a very religious person, so saying grace isn't always in my repertoire.

Patty thanked everyone who made the meal happen, thanked the food delivery truck drivers, the cashiers at the store, the farmers who grew the food. She thanked as many as she could think of whose hands made the meal possible, not just the almighty ones or the ones in the kitchen.

I loved this practice and adopted it as my own. It’s a beautiful way of being grateful and full of grace.

Then, I stumbled upon a crazy gratitude story that took this one (or 1000) steps further.

A NYC-based writer named A.J. Jacobs was doing a similar practice with his kids. He said he’d been in a bad mood for a while and thought the practice would cheer him up, while also teaching the kids about the power of gratitude. So, as a family,...

#gratitudegravy day 10

#gratitudeGRAVY 4

Happy Monday.

If you're starting this Monday out with appreciation and gratitude, well done, read on for more inspo!

If you've yet to drag yourself out of bed (probably me!) and are having a case of the Mondays, then hopefully today's gratitude prompt will get your week started on a grateful foot.

Before you even attempt to unbury yourself from your inbox (what a way to start the week), let's try some gratitude, instead.

When we think of practicing gratitude, most of us immediately feel thankful for our families, our friends, our furball companions and our favorite hot beverage (seriously, the amount of gratitude I hear about coffee is pretty significant!).

And unless you are the most wired person on earth, you probably spend more time at work than you do drinking coffee.

But in almost 3 years of running this challenge, I don't hear very often that people feel grateful for their work. As much as we might fantasize about our next vacation, early...

 
#gratitudeGRAVY 3

It's time to take your gratitude practice to the great outdoors. Your gratitude gravy mission for today is to go for a gratitude walk.

Gratitude GRAVY practice 3
During the walk, name at least 20 things you’re grateful for: comfy shoes, sunshine, rain, leaves, soil, your dog, your legs, fresh air, snow, blue sky, grey sky, the fact that the sky isn't falling, whatever greases your gratitude wheels.

If your world isn't buried in snow (mine is!), collect a rock, a leaf, a shell (you lucky beach dwelling duck!), pine cone or any other memento (or just take a photo, especially if it's sea life or something that shouldn't be removed).

We'll use these mementos to remind ourselves of something we were grateful for on the walk later in the challenge.

While you're on the walk, besides just naming a whole bunch of things you're grateful for, you could also reflect on (and be grateful for) the intelligence of nature. The connectedness of it all or how small our...

Gratitude GRAVY #2

I think we all probably are a little guilty of living a drive-by life. We have drive-by conversations with our loved ones, we speed through our day, plow through our inboxes, rush through our to-do list and then we count down until the weekend.

We tend to breeze right past a whole lot of what we could be grateful for in the present.
That's one of the beautiful benefits of gratitude. Gratitude makes us stop, recognize, acknowledge and appreciate whatever good is happening right in front of us.

As one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, so beautifully puts it, to appreciate life, you just have to be open for business. 

Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds … Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given.

We just have to be open for business. 
-Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow

Our lives might be swirling,...

Want to listen to the Gratitude Gravy challenge? Use the player above or subscribe to The Life Feast podcast right here.

#GratitudeGRAVY day 1

Consider the expression, "thank you". We've said it a million times. It's a habitual response. We say thank you for everything. Thanks, thank you, TY, Thx, sometimes we throw out a folded hands emoji and call it a day .

We speak it, we text it, we demand our kids say it, but do we mean it?
It's a knee-jerk generalized response. Conditioned by societal norms and Miss Manners. But as it's tossed around for everything, we become desensitized to the true power of experiencing and expressing gratitude.

Let's be real, should the same word be used to convey the same level of sincerity when someone politely holds the door open for us at a coffee shop as when someone holds our hand in the hospital?

Ummm probably not.

But in lieu of rewriting the English language and inventing a new vocabulary, let's decide that when someone does us a solid, we'll add...

Have you ever looked under the "hood" of motherhood and wondered who am I, anymore? I haven't seen "me" in a while, though I think my soul might be buried under a pile of laundry or a science project somewhere. 

Parenthood is an interesting paradox, isn't it?

It's beautiful, fulfilling, loving, stressful, exhausting, humorous, frustrating, terrifying and joyful all at the same time ... sometimes all in the same hour! 

And, as busy mothers, taking care of our share (and then some), we can lose ourselves along the way.

Remember those invisible mothers from Victorian photos I shared with you two weeks ago? It's an irony both metaphorical and literal. 

This week, in The Life Feast, I have an incredible special guest, one I've waited months to share with you who will be talking with us about how she found herself through photography. 

Mandy Seligman is a mom of five, a homeschooler, a wife, a grandmother, a sister, a daughter, and she is also she is also a...