Happy Thanksgiving week!  Next to Christmas, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s about family, food, and festivity. But, most importantly, it is a time to be intentional in reminiscing about how blessed I am. Too often we focus on the disappointments and the failures without being truly thankful. In a real way, thankfulness is the key to happiness and success in all your endeavors. How thankful are you? Today, I would like you and me to deeply consider our gratitude.

Even as I write this, I am extremely disappointed with some news I received today. I invested a lot of emotional, financial, and spiritual resources in this endeavor. And, right now it feels like it was for naught. I am still in a somewhat disoriented state from the news.

This then is the absolute perfect time to deeply consider all for which I am grateful. I choose not to focus on the reality of my disappointment. Rather, I will prioritize my gratefulness.

I choose to remember the people that touched me this year (including my awesome wife and children). I choose to focus on the breakthroughs that I gained.  I choose to deliberate on the amazing future that I expect to have.

No matter your condition, thankfulness is a choice.

I would like you to consider four steps to choose thankfulness this Thanksgiving.

Step 1: As specifically as you can write down the ten things that you are most grateful for this year.

Be specific. In other words, don’t just write that you are thankful for your spouse. Record specifically what your spouse did this year that makes you particularly thankful.

Here’s my top-10 to guide your own list generation.