A PIECE ON GRATITUDE: THANKSGIVING EDITION

As I sit around the long table seeing my fellow thanksgiving community stuff their face with food. I realized I am already full and content before indulging myself in my plate. I have begun the act of…

..SAVOURING

(which if you have been reading my blogs now…you know it’s my favorite thing to say HAHA). Savouring is defined as the ‘capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in one’s life’ (Bryant and Veroff, 2007). It’s important to note that savouring is a process and not something that happens, it requires active engagement on the person’s behalf. Therefore, savouring requires a person to slow down and attend intently to their surroundings, feelings, experiences – to stretch out the experiences. Bryant and Veroff propose four savouring processes: 1) basking (pride); 2) marveling (awe); 3) luxuriating (physical pleasure); and 4) thanksgiving (gratitude)…. WHICH IS WHAT THIS PAST WEEK HAS BEEN ALL ABOUT!

Before starting every meal, we went around saying what we are grateful for which truly warmed my soul. I feel like people often don’t talk about these feelings and we are often complaining about everyday life. After taking, positive psychology I realized that gratitude is an imperative component for well-being. Gratitude forces people to step back and reflect upon what and whom they have in their life, as well as counteracting complacency and ‘taken-for-grantedness’

I think that Thanksgiving shouldn’t be the only time we feeling thankful for stuff in life. I hope that I can practice activities like the gratitude journal or sending my friends more letters so that I can improve my well-being and foster happiness.

To start off the holiday season, my visiting host mom cooked a fancy Thanksgiving meal which left me no choice but to unbutton my pants HAHA. I wouldn’t of thought that dinner would last from 6pm-12am just savouring the moment with nourishing conversations. My host mom cooked a wonderful turkey spread, stuffing, a baked spinach and mushroom dish (a replacement for the meat), baked 3 pies (pumpkin, blueberry, and apple), cornbread, sweet mash potatoes, and just so much more. She dedicated 2 days of cooking for this meal which I am so so grateful for. We ended up playing a Christmas game where everyone shakes a dice and the person who gets 6 on the dice gets a prize! Turned very chaotic real quick.

I thought after this meal that I wouldn’t be able to eat again but HEY having another thanksgiving meal can’t hurt…

The very next day I signed up to volunteer at the The American Chamber of Commerce in Denmark (part of the global AmCham network and is accredited by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) where they host a Thanksgiving Meal. The current head of the organization happened to be a former DIS student which is absolutely insane to me. I spent the day getting to know different kids and helping them have fun.

And then after that guess what… I HAD ANOTHER THANKSGIVING MEAL… this time it was with my outdoor LLC. I love the Outdoor LLC because people take the initiatives to hang out with each other and create a lot of memories which I genuinely love. This friendsgiving was so wholesome and warm because we all made dishes and brought them. I had so many new foods and flavor profiles which made me very grateful to be a part of such a diverse community. This meal definitely had to be one of the best meals I had because we all talked about things we appreciate back at home and it really showed up in the food taste.. MADE WITH LOVE

Today is Thursday November 23rd, 2023 and its Thanksgiving in Copenhagen. Despite eating so many great meals throughout the week and feeling loved in many communities… today I somewhat feel lonely. I think it’s because of the fact that today is just some normal day here. To combat that feeling I ended up making plans with two of my friends in Positive Psychology and we were planning on seeing more museums… however we ended up sitting at The American Pie Company talking about life. I think that’s when I knew that I was channeling savouring. I usually would be upset that I didn’t to do X amount of things and just “wasted” that time by talking. But instead, I realized that I was happy and satisfied and that means that time was well spent.

STAY GRATEFUL SEE YOU GUYS SOON 🙂