How can you improve your well-being and ability to grow through hardship? From LA, let’s multiply the power of thankfulness.

This week in the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving, taking time apart from work, conflict, and division to honor that which unites us and, without fail, elevates humanity: Gratitude.

This isn’t a platitude but a well researched fact by institutions including Harvard Health, Positive Psychology, and the Greater Good Science Center. Gratitude is proven to enhance well-being, decision making, sleep, and relationships while reducing anxiety and depression. Here are three ways you can, on any day, activate these powerful benefits.

Sara Josepha Hale spent more than two decades campaigning Governors and Presidents to create a national holiday to “offer God our joy and tribute.” President Lincoln finally said yes, establishing Thanksgiving in 1863, while the nation was embroiled in Civil War. Despite this, or because of this, he highlighted America’s many blessings, then saying, “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.” The point is, we transcend pain, despair, and conflict by acknowledging our blessings.

Have you adequately thanked the people in your life who have loved you, encouraged you, and inspired you? Even those who test us or frustrate us offer gifts of growth we can activate through gratitude.

Appreciate yourself, your past efforts, mistakes, and sacrifices that have made this moment possible. We can be self-affirming and thankful without becoming self-focused or selfish.

So wherever you live, I invite you to offer thanks to God, to others, and to yourself. Because in gratitude, we truly do become one. So sincerely, thank you. And until next week, stay Off Balance On Purpose.