- Hi, my name is Kristen and I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I wanna talk to you about gratitude for a few minutes. Practicing gratitude is important for our mental wellness but it's more important to do when times are hard. But practicing gratitude in the midst of our struggle can be increasingly difficult. A lot of times we look at gratitude and we try to find the big things. That's what we wanna stay focused on. When sometimes when we're in the midst of our struggle, sometimes it's just important for us to refocus and look at the smaller things in our lives. This isn't to downplay the struggle that we're in or to pretend that we're not doing well. What this is is to remind us that there is still good things when bad things are happening. So today I have a quick activity that I want you to do with me and that is meant to help you see the small things in your life that we can focus on. All you need is a piece of paper, it can be a notebook, it can be a journal, or even a back of a piece of junk mail that you just have lying around your kitchen. Today I'm gonna use a journal to help me with my activity. Now what I want you to do is to take that piece of paper and we're gonna do a five, four, three, two, one activity. So I'm gonna have you write five fives on each line and then I'm gonna have you write four fours, three threes, two twos, and one one. And this is gonna help us to create our structure for our gratitude activity for this process. Now, as we work through this, you're gonna be allowed to put whatever it is that you want down because this is your activity. So your answers are gonna look different from mine so we're not gonna compare because what you are grateful for is gonna be different than anybody else is grateful for, and that's okay. This is your activity. So let's get started. For the five fives, I want you to take a look around the room that you're sitting in or the place that you're in and I want you to name five things that you can see right now that you like. This can be anything. It can be the paint on the wall, or a picture, or even a figurine. It can even be a person. It's your choice. Now, for the four fours, I want you to name four things in your world, in your life that put a smile on your face. Again, this can be anything. There are no rules to what you put down as long as it follows the topic. Then I want you to write three activities in the threes that you love to do. And for two, I want you to list the people that you can count on. So I want you to list two people that you can count on. And for one, I want you to take a moment and think about that struggle that you're in right now and what is one thing that you can let go of and kind of give back to the universe. What is one thing you can let go of control of because you don't have control of it? What is one thing that you can take the weight off your shoulders and just give it back? A lot of times we are often carrying so much struggle that isn't even ours to carry. Now, once you've completed that, I want you to take a look at your list. Now you've come up with 14 things in your life that you are grateful for. I want you to keep coming back to this list or even redoing this list every once in a while to remind yourself that even in the midst of the struggle that we're going through, there are still good things in our life, no matter how big or how small they may be.