Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Other people's happy thoughts...

When I was little and my mom and I traded happy thoughts at bedtime, we would always start with "MY happy thought...", putting the emphasis on what was important to us. Looking through the stories today, I saw a lot of what other people were grateful for and decided to feature that.

Helenair.com posted a story about two University of Montana graduates who formed Grateful Nation, a fund that sounds the children of fallen soldiers to college in the UM system for free. Once a child who is enrolled in the program turns 12, he or she is matched with a UM professor/mentor who helps ready the child for college. The founders of the program were stunned to learn how little federal assistance the families of those killed in action receive and wanted to do something to show the American people's support and appreciation for the nation's defenders.

The Synapse, the student paper of UC-San Francisco, recently published a story about a wellness program the university is running to get its students to focus on their physical, emotional and mental well-being. Part of the "Passport to Wellness" requires the students to write down three things they are grateful for, and the story in the paper lists a sample of the responses.

This last one isn't exactly an explication of what someone is grateful for, but I had to include it. I'm still a little leery of YouTube unless someone sends me a direct link to something I HAVE to see, so apparently I missed the phenomenon that is the GratiDudes. These guys promote people finding their "inner Super Powers" and how embracing gratitude can change your life. They are so gungho about it, they've created a dance and posted a video on YouTube. My favorite part is near the middle when two guys doing the dance nearly fall out of a tree... And by the way, I found the reference to this on a NASCAR blog...

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