There's nothing like having a police officer unload your luggage from the back of a patrol car at a gas station to remind you of why it's important to thank a stranger.

A week ago, we were at the tail end of a 3 hour road trip to the airport from our mountain town, driving down hill at 75 mph when our car's electrical system COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN amidst busy rush-hour Denver traffic.

As the dashboard went from "every engine light, warning light on" red to complete darkness, we contemplated using the nearby runaway truck ramp. Luckily, my husband's skillful coasting took the car just a tiny bit further to a small triangular median between the onramp and the highway to pull over. Fortunately, we were alive, but the car was now completely dead.

To say this was scary and dangerous and a terrible way to start the Thanksgiving week is a gross understatement.

It was too dangerous to even open a car door to get out of the car, nearly impossible for an Uber to pick...

#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

This Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving, I want you to gamify your gratitude. That's right be a gratitude gamer!

Another way that we can keep our gratitude practice fun and frequent (and to get our loved ones involved) is to gamify it.

Not only does being a gratitude gamer help our own practice stay interesting, but it also is a great way to involve others and reap the benefits of what psychologists call, the upward spiral of positivity.

The upward spiral is contagious, meaning the energy from others' gratitude can greatly increase our own and vice versa.

This next gratitude activity is an easy way to spark your specificity, get you moving and keep you laughing …

Plus, it’s a great gratitude icebreaker, and we all need to move around before or after the tryptophan hits the bloodstream...

Gratitude Gravy Practice #9

Gratitude Ping Pong

This game was invented by my mentor in positive psychology, Emiliya Zhivotovskaya.

It's very simple. You just take a ping pong and...

I lived in Provence, France during my junior year in college with a French family in a tiny apartment. 3 adults, 2 kids, one bathroom and no clothes dryer.

The mother of the family would kindly wash my clothes and hang them outside to dry on the clothesline. 

This might conjure up romantic images of lavender-scented crisp linens in the French countryside, but the reality was that my undies were hanging over a parking lot, my blue jeans came off the line stiff as cardboard and the towels were as soft as sandpaper. 

This certainly wasn't the great tragedy of my youth, but I will say that when I returned home, I had a new appreciation for clothes dried in a dryer. I had clearly taken the luxury of having a clothes dryer for granted my entire life.

As the chief laundress of my own household, on days that I'm less than thrilled to delve into a week's worth of wash, I can easily switch from being resentful to grateful. 

I think about how grateful...

#gratitudegravy day 7

Gratitude is a social emotion. Gratitude wants to go out dancing, not be locked away in the dungeon. This is why writing in your daily gratitude in a journal is really only half of the gratitude equation.

Because the best gratitude practice is both reflective and expressive.

In fact, a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology showed that people who reaped the biggest benefits from gratitude do both.

This means you not only write privately in your gratitude journal, but you also GIVE THAT THANKS AWAY as we do in the #gratitudegravy challenge.

According to psychologist Sara Algoe’s, find, remind and bind theory, gratitude is so social, it helps us find new relationships, reminds us of our existing relationships and helps us to nurture and pay attention to these relationships that bind us together in community.

This suggests that gratitude has a distinct evolutionary purpose as this is all excellent for the continuation of our...