Writers, Let’s Be Mindful About Gratitude

by Beth K. Vogt @BethVogt

November always turns my heart toward gratitude because of the Thanksgiving holiday. But why limit being thankful to just one day of the month? Why not spread thankfulness throughout the entire thirty days?

Did you know there are health benefits to being grateful? Yep. According to a 2023 article By UCLA Health, gratitude:

• Reduces depression: People with a grateful mindset say they have a higher satisfaction with life than those who don’t practice gratitude. 
• Lessens anxiety: Choosing to be grateful combats negative thinking.
• Relieves stress: Stress can trigger a fight-or-flight response in your body, causing your heart to beat faster, your adrenaline to pump, and your muscles to contract. Gratitude can help calm your nervous system because it brings down your heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure.

With these benefits of gratitude in mind, I invite you to read the following gratitude quotes, as well as Psalm 100, which is a song of thanksgiving to God. Consider what—and who—you can be thankful for today. Maybe write out a detailed list of things both big and small that you’re grateful for—maybe even take the time to write a note to someone and tell them why you’re thankful for them.

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“Thanksgiving is a spiritual exercise, necessary to the building of a healthy soul. It takes us out of the stuffiness of ourselves into the fresh breeze and sunlight of the will of God.” Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015), author

“As you look at your blessings, take note of what happens. Anxiety grabs his bags and slips out the back door. Worry refuses to share the heart with gratitude. One heartfelt “thank you” will suck the oxygen out of worry’s world.” Max Lucado (1955-), minister and author

“Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are not an ‘accident,’ but a divine choice. It is important to realize how often we have had chances to be grateful and have not used them. When someone is kind to us, when an event turns out well, when a problem is solved, a relationship restored, a wound healed, there are very concrete reasons to offer thanks: be it with words, with flowers, with a letter, a card, a phone call, or just a gesture of affection. . . . Every time we decide to be grateful it will be easier to see new things to be grateful for. Gratitude begets gratitude, just as love begets love.” Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), theologian and writer

Psalm 100, a psalm of praise and thanksgiving

Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.

2 Serve the Lord with gladness;

Come before Him with joyful singing.

3 Know that the Lord Himself is God;

It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;

We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

4 Enter His gates with thanksgiving

And His courts with praise.

Give thanks to Him, bless His name.

5 For the Lord is good;

His lovingkindness is everlasting

And His faithfulness to all generations.

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Writers, Let's Be Mindful About Gratitude, insight from author @BethVogt on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

Beth K. Vogt believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “Never.” She’s authored 15 novels and novellas, both contemporary romance and women’s fiction. Beth is a Christy Award winner, an ACFW Carol Award winner, and a  RITA® finalist. Her newest contemporary romance novel, Dedicated to the One I Love, released June 20, 2023. Her novel Things I Never Told You, book one in her Thatcher Sisters Series by Tyndale House Publishers, won the 2019 AWSA Golden Scroll Award for Contemporary Novel of the Year. An established magazine writer and former editor of the leadership magazine for MOPS International, Beth blogs for Learn How to Write a Novel and The Write Conversation and also enjoys speaking to writers group and mentoring other writers. She lives in Colorado with her husband Rob, who has adjusted to discussing the lives of imaginary people. Connect with Beth at bethvogt.com.