Happy Thanksgiving! We are heading down to visit my Dad for the holiday. He and my mom were married for 51 years. She's been gone now for just over six months and we've all been a little worried about him and how he would do during the holidays. When I asked him how he was doing and if the thought of the holidays were making him sad, he said, "I had 51 happy years with your Mom. The way I see it, I have a lot to be grateful for. I would be sad if I had had 51 unhappy years."

Without knowing it, my Dad is modeling two of the key tenets from the science of positive psychology. Researchers have proven that those people who can re-frame even seemingly negative experiences into either something positive or into a learning experience develop greater levels of resiliency, which is a key to human flourishing. After all, happiness is not the absence of all adversity and challenge; if we had to wait for those circumstances our happy moments would be far too fleeting and infrequent.

The other concept that he is modeling is the action of gratitude: identifying and expressing those things for which we are grateful. Researchers have studied gratitude and its affect. Gratitude is one of the positive emotions which elicits a very strong and powerful response in humans. It opens up our minds to creativity, new ways of thinking, and new ways of approaching difficult situations.

So, this Thanksgiving, its not just polite to give thanks for all we have to be grateful for – it also unleashes powerful positive emotions within us! And, of course, it also feels pretty good when someone tells you that they are grateful for something that you have done for them. It’s truly a win-win!

I hope you have a truly loving, kind and joyous Thanksgiving. More than that, I hope you all feel like I do: that I have so many blessings to be thankful for that I must be the luckiest person alive.

To Your Success,

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