If you are at all familiar with social media, you probably recognize #TBT. It stands for “Throwback Thursday.” It’s an opportunity to post a past picture of yourself or people you know. Most are meant to show how far we’ve come, or how beautiful we used to be, or who we used to hang with. Some of those pics cause me to gasp in horror, tear up in memory or laugh in disbelief. I love #TBT. But I’ve decided to start by own Thursday hashtag – #ThankfulThursday – where I take a picture or comment about things for which I’m thankful. Pretty self-explanatory.

Today’s a pretty normal day for me – nothing special happening. I find that on extraspecial days – days with lots of fun activities, or days with friends and family around – I have no problem being filled with thankfulness. But on typical and routine days, it seems to take more thought to find things to be grateful for…but I’m up for the challenge. How about you?

I took a great long walk over my lunch hour, with comfortable shoes, in glorious sunshine, listening to my favorite music, on my nice smartphone. Right there I’ve got at least 9 things to be thankful for: I can walk…I have food for lunch…I have a place to work…I have shoes…I can see and feel the sunshine…I can hear…I have music available to me 24/7…I own a cell phone. Not so hard to be grateful, is it?

When my kids were much younger, and we had long car trips to endure, we came up with games to play to keep ourselves entertained. As a homeschooling mom, I was always looking for ways to teach my kids something, so we called our favorite pastime “The Alphabet Game.” This wasn’t rocket science. We’d come up with a category  like Animals, Food, Cities in the United States, Capitols of the World, and then, starting with A, we tried to think of a item that would fulfill the category. So if the category was Animals, we’d take turns going around and coming up with an animal starting with the letter A. We didn’t allow for duplication, so if I said “aardvaark,” the next person had to say a different animal, until all four of us had played. Some letters were easy…some extremely difficult ( “x” and “q” – ugh). As the boys got older, the categories got harder. On one of our last trips we used the categories “Musicians,” “Musical Trios,” and “Academy Award winning Movies.” Sometimes only Sean and I play, especially if we’re in the front seat together. But it never fails, we always get occasional input from the backseat passengers (i.e.”Queen Latifah” from my husband when I was struggling with musician starting with letter Q).

I’ve come up with a new Alphabet Game category for our next trip…What Are You Thankful For? Starting with A, you must say something you are grateful for. I started playing it in my mind on my walk today.

A is for Aromas – I must have passed at least three restaurants that were oozing wonderful smells…barbeque smoke from Big Daddies, the mouthwatering french fry grease smell from Gyro Hut, and grilled hamburgers from Parlor City. What other A things can you come up with?

If you’re having a tough day, take a Thankfulness break. Stop to think of all you have to be grateful for – write them down if you need to remind yourself later. We’re all going through rough patches…financial struggles, health issues, family crisis, depression and sadness everywhere. But a simple but surefire way to combat the hard times, is reminding yourself of the good things…the common things that give us joy and gladness. Make this a real deal #ThankfulThursday.