During this period of time when life is so different due to the coronavirus, it's natural for our brains to be thinking about all the ways that life is just more difficult than it used to be. And because the coronavirus is a threat to our safety, it's also normal for our brains to be focusing on that threat and imagining negative things that could happen to ourselves and to others.

While some of that thinking can help us to take important precautions to stay healthy, too much of that thinking can affect our emotional well-being, leading to increased anxiety and depression. So now more than ever, it's especially important to balance out our thinking with some positivity. One way of helping your brain to notice and think about the positive things in your life is to spend time each day creating and adding to a gratitude list.

A gratitude list is just what it sounds like, a list of things in life for which you feel grateful. It can include people, such as family members, friends, and other loved ones. It can also include people like artists, musicians, authors, people who move you, who help you to laugh, to dance, to think. It could also include larger gifts that you have in life, things like health, a place to sleep, food to eat.

And in order to keep your list feeling fresh, it's really important to take note and to add in some of the smaller moments for which you feel grateful each day. Those can be moments like spending time with a pet, sharing a smile with a loved one, taking a deep smell of that first cup of coffee of the day, watching a favorite TV show, or maybe feeling the warmth of the sunlight streaming in through your window on a beautiful day.

To get started, you'll want to decide where you're going to keep your list. You can use a journal, a whiteboard, or consider just taping up a piece of paper to your fridge or a front door. There are also some wonderful apps you can download, including one that's called Gratitude that can help you create your list.

As with any new practice that you start, you also want to consider how you can best remember to create and then add to your list each day. The Gratitude app and others like it, they have built in calendar alerts, and you can also consider create setting your own alarm or calendar alert. You can also consider having a daily time that you share with your loved ones or friends things for which you feel grateful. That could be at dinnertime, bed time, or while connecting virtually, and those moments can also give you valuable opportunities to express gratitude towards others, something that can boost your own emotional well-being and that of the person that you're expressing their gratitude towards.

Creating a gratitude list can be a simple, yet, really powerful way to add some positivity to your thinking each day. And I'll end by expressing some gratitude to you. Thank you so much for allowing me into your day today to share this anxiety buster with you.