[To view a video of this post please click here: https://youtu.be/ovq_-Jb68ik]

I'm sitting here, writing this, with a box of 24 Craft Beers from around the World. This is a thoughtful gift from Emily, Matt, and Michael – an Advent Calendar of Beers! Cheers! Hanging off the back of the lounge door is Lady Penelope's Advent Calendar of... Chocolates! Shopping in ASDA, I saw an Advent Calendar of Cheeses! An idea began to form...

Mindset is most definitely affected by focus. We get more of what we pay attention to (in terms of thoughts and thinking), and whatever we think about frames our day. In some senses, we are what we think. In fact, there's even that famous proverb, "As a person thinks in their heart, so they are." (From Proverbs 23:7)

Could thinking about gratitude make us feel grateful today? In case it works, here's a Seasonal Thanking Game, a Christmas Thinking Game, to brighten the patterns that twinkle between your neurons! Do this, and your brain will light up like a Christmas Tree!

The brain is really very good at finishing incomplete patterns – like finishing other people's sentences for them!

The game is a finishing game – and it goes like this. I've called it, "The 12 Aspects of Gratitude," like the song, "The 12 Days of Christmas." Ask your brain to come up with examples of what you're grateful for attached to the quantities 1 to 12. For example, I'm grateful for Penelope – she's my number 1. My 3 sons – my number 3. My 5 grandchildren – and you see the pattern. However, "People," is just one category. I love the four seasons. I'm also in love with the three words, "I love you!"

Before you are tempted to think this is too hard with numbers like 8 or 11 – let me be joyfully honest with you: my intention is for you to just think about some of them! If you could come up with 6 examples of quantities that come easily to you, you'll have lifted your focus and fixed it upon that which makes you happy... and I want you to be happy.

This is most definitely a game that becomes better in the sharing... so please pop your joyous answers to any of the numbers in the comments!

Lex

A Moodscope member