Gratitude Works! By Robert A. Emmons
First off, thank you for all of the positive feedback about our UTO Reads! program! When I was a kid, I loved participating in Book It, a program where you got a free pizza for reading books. I can’t promise you a free pizza, but I can promise that these books will deepen your (or your family’s) experience of gratitude. We do want to hear from you: Have you read something recently that inspired your gratitude discipline? If so, please write a book review that we can share here with others.
This month, I want to introduce a book that’s been sitting on my shelf and invite you to read (and journal) along with me during Advent. Advent this year is 21 days, so it’s perfect for this challenge – a 21-day program for deepening gratitude. It’s also a perfect time to read together about gratitude because often there is so much to give thanks for during December and so much to do that we often forget to simply stop, be present, and be grateful. With that said, I want to invite you to join me in reading Gratitude Works! by Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D. Emmons is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and his research focuses on gratitude. The book begins with an overview of why gratitude is important, from the health benefits to the overall emotional effects of practicing gratitude, and it ends with the 21-day challenge, which is to keep a gratitude journal with specific prompts. I hope you’ll join me. I’ll review the book and share what folks have learned in our January e-newsletter, so email me your thoughts as you go along! One person who joins the read along challenge and signs up via our Facebook event (or email me if you don’t do Facebook) will receive a UTO prize in the mail. It won’t be pizza, but it will be fantastic!