What's Your Best Part Of Day?

Thanks for these clips (see above)! Practicing gratitude remains a highlight around here. Although ritualizing the sharing of the great parts of our family’s day bring us together at meals, helps us connect, and assists us in talking about our time apart at school or work, it also may be boosting our health.
Practicing gratitude has been found to improve overall wellbeing, assist in sleep, and help decrease anxiety and depression. People who practice gratitude also report better long-term satisfaction with life and demonstrate kinder behavior to others. Who wouldn’t want this for their kids?
Best Part of Day (BPOD) is a big deal in our house. Consider it for yours?
Thanks for answering our call for sharing BPODs from your life (captured in the video). Clearly we didn’t get to include everyone’s BPOD here. We’re hoping to have another composite video to share in a few months! Feel free to send in any more BPODs you’re excited to share.

Tips For Inspiring Gratitude

• Build rituals into your day to share what you are thankful for every day, even the hard ones.
• Write thank you notes to people for non-material things (i.e. a thank you  to a teacher for remembering something special or a thank you to a friend for showing up).
• End the day at bedtime talking about what you’re looking forward to. Remember that some research finds we may get more enjoying/happiness planning a vacation than actually experiencing it! You have a summer camping trip planned? Involve your children in the planning, prep, and enthusiasm that goes into pulling it off — boost their happiness juice.
• If it seems overwhelming, start with “gratitude light” –doing a BPOD every day (takes less than a minute) or incorporate tips here in New York Times summary of the research on gratitude.