As a tradition of the Thanksgiving holiday many families, including my own, go around the table and say what you are thankful for. We do this every year and as much as I love it I think that it should be an everyday tradition.

We as people hardly show as much gratitude and thankfulness that we do on a single holiday, the rest of the year. We all save up our “I am thankful for” speeches for this one day a year. My question is why do we not use this sentence more often.

There is so much in life to be thankful for, and a lot of those things are the small things that happen every day that we take for granted. Yes, we do say thank you for things and show gratitude but I cannot remember the last time I said the sentence “I am thankful for…” past the dinner table at Thanksgiving. But of course I know that I am thankful for many other things, they are just things that I don’t think of. Like I am thankful that it snowed in Eau Claire on Tuesday, or I am thankful that the milk in my fridge didn’t expire until the next day, or I am thankful for the amount of free time I was able to designate to my friends this weekend. There are all of these small little things that I don’t think about.

Life is too short to not be thankful for things. We need to think about the positives and the things we are thankful for every day. We take so many things for granted, like the expiration date of my milk; it’s a small thing but if it would have been expired it would have been a negative thing in my day. Call me crazy but I believe that the more positivity I bring into my life the happier I will be, even if that is milk, or smiling at a stranger, or someone telling me they like my dress. There are these little moments in life that can turn a person’s day around and I want to be thankful for that.

Of course I will always be thankful for *insert basic Thanksgiving dinner table answer*, I am blessed with an amazing family and an incredible group of friends who are my support system. I am thankful that I am in school and I am loving every minute of it and obviously I am thankful for my dog. But, I want to talk about all of the things that I find to be small but significant moments in my day.

So, I propose that instead of keeping the “I am thankful for…” speeches to the Thanksgiving dinner table and moving it to the dinner table every night. Positivity spreads through people, so if you had a good day or there was a good moment in your day other people will hear about it and your happiness will spread to them. And in turn their good day or moments will spread to you. We have so much in our lives to be thankful for and I truly believe that we need to harness that gratitude and happiness and place it into our everyday lives.