Three Thanks

Hello friends!

My beautiful and hilarious sister-in-law and I would love for you to join us for our very first link-up: Three Thanks.

Purpose: Gratitude is important in living a happy, healthy life.

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Robert Emmons, a psychology professor at UC Davis and a researcher in the field of gratitude, found countless benefits from regularly practicing gratitude, specifically physical and emotional advantages and strengthening of relationships and communities. People who are grateful exercise more, have increased energy, are happier and healthier in general, and possess less anxiety/depression/stress/loneliness.

Gratitude is an essential -- and oft-forgotten -- component of healthy living.

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Since both The Swallow Flies and Here Come Happiness focus on health and happiness, we thought that this would be the perfect link-up for us to start, and we sincerely hope you join in -- and encourage your friends to do so as well.

There can never be enough gratitude in this world.

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(I love Winnie the Pooh)

To Do: Each Thursday, Aly and I will host this link-up, and we hope that you will join in with us. First, please post the link-up badge on your post. Second, please link back to both The Swallow Flies and Here Comes Happiness. Third, please write a post about gratitude and enter your blog's information in the link list below.

Without any further ado, let's get this party link-up started!

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<a href="http://theswallowflies.blogspot.com" title="The Swallow Flies & Here Comes Happiness Three Thanks"><img src="http://i1282.photobucket.com/albums/a538/emmy815/threethanks_zpse0bfc5a3.jpg" alt="The Swallow Flies & Here Comes Happiness Three Thanks" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Most every night I like to write in my gratitude journal. Generally, I write three things that I appreciated over the course of that day, and I try to be very specific. For instance, instead of just saying, "I am grateful for my mom," I say, "I am grateful that my mom was so considerate when planning what she was going to cook around my crazy diet."

So, for Thankful Thursdays, I am going to do the same: I am going to write three things for which I was grateful over the course of the week.

Here we go with Round One:

~~ONE~~

I am grateful to live in a city with beautiful scenery through which to run. I mean, just check out some of these pics from recent running routes:

All of these scenes are within three miles of my house, which is smack-dab in the middle of the city. I love, love, love the beauty of nature, and seeing it by foot rather than speeding through it in a car often leaves me awestruck.

~~TWO~~

I am grateful for my sister-in-law, Aly. She and I have talked nearly every day for the past several weeks, and I truly consider her one of my best friends in the whole world.

Our feet in Mexico, circa 2007.

I am grateful that she is obsessed with blogging (like I am), that she shares similar interests that I do (fitness and nutrition), that she understands my craziness (and can talk me off the ledge), and that she is so inspirational and motivational and encouraging.

The two of us have some crazy ideas in the works, and I'm super pumped -- and extremely grateful.

~~THREE~~

I am grateful for sunshine and for spring! While I tried not to complain about it too much (especially since there were people who had it much worse than I did -- ahem, Aly and Alex), this was a pretty rough, seemingly never-ending winter.

And while we still had another snowy day on Monday, there have been some glimpses of warm weather and glorious sunshine -- and I just know that the trees will start blossoming and the grass will start turning green before we know it.

I love, love, love living where there are seasons.

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See you tonight for a recap of the day -- and I hope to see you all back here next week for another Thankful Thursday!


What are three things from the past week for which you are especially thankful?