By Gini Dietrich
I have just now decided that we will not run blog posts tomorrow. We were definitely not going to do it on Thursday and Friday, but I am taking tomorrow off and, if my email is any indication, most of you are already off.
Besides, it’s not really fair to a guest blogger to run at 1:00 ET on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving so we’ll save her for next week when everyone will be back.
Today’s blog posts will be the end for the week (and I’m sorry there will not be a Gin and Topics because there are two really great Thanksgiving videos out right now that will just have to wait until after the holiday).
To that end, it’s time for the annual Grateful Challenge.
I first learned about this from Judy Dunn (and see she also is repeating it this year) and Jennifer Devitt has since kept me accountable to doing it.
The Grateful Challenge
The challenge is this: Set a timer for 10 minutes and write down all of the things you’re grateful for—or things that you love—as fast as you can. The goal is to get to 99 (last year was 67 and the year before was 82…perhaps I’m getting less grateful with age?).
So here goes!
- SNOW (the snowiest November in Chicago in history!)
- Kelly Dietrich
- A Small Child
- My momma
- Jack Bauer (my dog, not the TV character)
- My sister, who shares great kid stories daily
- Horace, my bread starter who has been alive since March and doing quite well, thank you very much!
- Freshly baked bread
- Making bread in my self-constructed steam oven
- Tulips
- My bike
- My iPhone
- My iPad
- Alexa
- Movies
- Reading
- Riding the lakefront as the sun rises
- Downhill skiing
- All of the little faces who call me Aunt Gini
- All of the siblings who call me older (but not bigger!) sister
- My friends (if I get desperate, I’ll list them out)
- The Arment Dietrich team
- The Spin Sucks team
- Walking down the stairs on Christmas morning to watch the sheer joy of Santa’s leave behinds
- Nieces piling in bed with me when they visit
- Law & Order SVU
- Wine
- Almond croissants
- Chili con queso
- Freshly painted fingernails
- Lipgloss
- Cooking
- Just sharpened knives
- Decorating my house for Christmas
- My birthday
- The Rocky Mountains
- Writing
- Crystal stemware
- Will Ferrell in “Tight Pants”
- Jimmy Fallon
- Robert Downey, Jr.
- The Nova Scotia weatherman
- The relationship I’ve rebuilt with my dad
- Grandma Dietrich
- Kelly’s sisters
- Pop and EMIL
- Boots
- Hats (aka toques)
- Shirts that have thumbholes in the sleeves
- Sephora
- Taking bubble baths
- Winter
- Wind chill
- My Jawbone UP
- Having everyone over for Thanksgiving
- The quiet in the pre-dawn hours
- High heels
- Cashmere
- Super Hero t-shirts
- Kelly’s Indian accent
- The community at Spin Sucks
- Building a company
- Taking entrepreneurial risk
- Candy
- Meeting social media friends IRL (in real life)
- Eavesdropping to make up stories about people
- The smell of the salted caramel plugins
- Salted caramels
- Sharpie pens
- Winning
- Really bad storms
- Canadians
- Making Kelly laugh a good belly laugh
- Black licorice
- Jelly beans
- Going to the movies
- The El, which allows me great stories because I ALWAYS miss my stops
- Nancy, the crossing guard in front of our house
- My Starbucks barista
- TSA pre-check
- My cooking journal
- Being in charge of my own destiny
- Making enough money to give my team raises and bonuses
- My pink Camelback
- Working with my coaching group (one of my favorite meetings of the entire week)
- Our newly launched online course
- My hair stylist, who I fondly refer to as the Hair Nazi
- Moleskin
- Biotin (it really works for stronger nails!)
- Jessica Jones (totally into this right now)
- Narcos (and this)
- The private Facebook group we created for the course students (which is way more fun than any other work)
- Clients who make lots of money because they take our advice and learn from us (and because they’re smart)
- Remote deposit
- The Peloton app on the iPad
- My Wolf range (I mean, I really love this thing)
- My new chest freezer (who would think one would get this excited about a freezer?)
- StitchFix (I mean, love)
I did it! To be fair, I cheated a little bit because I had two lists to work from and repeated some things from both. But still…I got to 99!
I’m also ridiculously grateful for each of you. For those of you who leave comments here almost daily. For those of you who share our content. For those of you who send me private messages. For those of you who read and apply lessons to your jobs. For those of you who participate in some of our products. For those of you who have kept our passion alive for this blog.
Thank you. Thank you to each and every one of you.
Your Challenge
Now it’s your turn.
Set your timers for 10 minutes and get to work!
If you publish your list, post the link in the comments here so I can share all of the grateful posts for the next week or so.
Have a very happy Thanksgiving!
image credit: Pixabay
