Gratitude Changes You

What if the smallest moments are the ones that change you the most? We open the door to a season of gratitude by zooming in on overlooked details that carry outsized calm: steam curling from a mug, the crisp lift of fall air, a smile that catches you off guard. When attention learns to notice, gratitude stops being a concept and starts becoming a daily, body-level experience.

We unpack the GrateFall series with a line that reframes everything: gratitude doesn’t change the world; it changes you. From there, we move past the bland, repeatable “I’m thankful for family and health” list and into practical tools that make noticing stick. You’ll hear how a simple mud room whiteboard labeled “good things” trains the whole household to log small wins in plain sight, why specificity (fresh sheets, wood smoke, a spontaneous hug) is the secret to emotional recall, and how to create a low-cost “box of blessings” packed with affirmations, quotes, and notes that travel well to dorms, offices, and new seasons.

We also share a preview of our Peaceful Pathways seasonal box made with Petal and Pink—a winter bundle pairing five immersive guided meditations with calming, tactile treasures to build cue-based rituals at home. Think cozy nooks, fireside focus, tea-time resets, and environmental anchors that gently steer your nervous system toward rest. Along the way, we offer simple evening prompts, habit anchors tied to routines you already have, and a closing prayer that centers presence, service, and steady steps.

If you’re ready to retrain your attention and let tiny joys do quiet, powerful work in your life, this conversation is your map. Listen, try one practice tonight, and tell us what small, specific good you noticed today. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a gentle reset, and leave a review to help others find Create Harmony.

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcoming Joy, Setting The Scene
• 1:08 Great Fall Gratitude Series
• 2:03 Gratitude Changes You, Not The World
• 2:29 Training Attention Beyond The Usual List
• 3:16 The Mud Room Whiteboard Practice
• 5:14 Box Of Blessings Gift Idea
• 6:21 Peaceful Pathways Seasonal Box Launch
• 7:41 Closing Prayer And Farewell

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Welcome back to the Create Harmony Podcast. This is a place where we embrace joy. We embrace all the little joys that are nestled down in little things all around us all the time. For example, freshly washed sheets, a spontaneous hug, or listening to whatever is your new favorite song. Maybe it's baking something and savoring the flavor, or a genuine smile from a stranger when you're out and about, seeing sunlight streaming through the window or wrapping your hands around a mug of warm cider. Maybe it's feeling the crisp air of a fall morning or smelling the scent of wood smoke in the distance. Each of these things holds a tiny piece of joy, and they are waiting for you. And it only takes a moment to notice them. You are not too busy to capture that joy. It just takes practice to get in the habit of noticing. And that is what we're all about. So this is episode 147, and I am your host, Sally Burlington. So today we're gonna pay special attention to those tiny joys because we're right in the middle of a series that we do every fall, and it's called Great Fall. You know, it's all about gratitude, and it happens in the fall, so we call it Great Fall. So gratitude is really a huge part of good mental well-being. It's harder to be mad or sad or down if you incorporate gratitude practices into your life. So I was thinking about this. I've really been thinking about this during great our great fall season here at Create Harmony, and I've really been wondering how to put more gratitude practices into my rhythm. And last week, our pastor at our church preached a sermon about the importance of gratitude. So how about that? I'm thankful for that. And one of the things she said really, really resonated with me. She said, gratitude doesn't change the world, it changes you. And you are the only person that you are responsible for. So when you think about it, it doesn't matter if the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. The only thing we can change is ourselves. And if we all worked harder to focus on gratitude, think about the impact that could have on the world around us. Think about the powerful ways change could happen. So as we talk about how to create habits of noticing and taking that one step further and giving thanks, I'm gonna share a few things that are working for us. Some of these are things we shared during Great Fall from last year, but I think they bear repeating. So I've shared before that when I try to practice gratitude, I've confessed to you that I tend to return to the same old things. If I think about if I'm gonna make a gratitude list right now, I would think about my family, my health, my house, my sweet dog. And that is the type of thing that comes up with this habit without giving it quite enough gusto. But in order to pay attention, in order to train myself to pay attention to new things, new tiny blessings, I have to work a little harder. I have to go a little deeper. And in order to do that, we put up a whiteboard in our mud room. We have a mud room where you enter our house, and we have this whiteboard, and on one little section, it has places where we write write groceries, you know. So anything we need from the grocery store we write on there. And then the other section, it has the topic at the top is good things. So it's not complicated, it's simple. Just anything that is good that we can think of. And that really retrains our brains to think back towards good things instead of focusing all the time on negative things. So periodically we write all sorts of things up there, and they span from you know a yummy dinner to time to work on projects to compassionate friends. I mean, anything, the full gamut is represented here. And the nice thing about it is what I like about it is then it's displayed there. And as we're coming and going through our mud room throughout our week, we can revisit it. We can look up there again and see, oh gosh, I'm thankful for our dog sitter, or I'm thankful for that weekend trip we went on, or all the little things that happen in our day, it it becomes part of our household and it reminds us and also maybe the people that visit us. So anybody else who who comes and goes through our mud room might look up there and think, oh wow, that's a good thing. Maybe I'll think of some good things in my own life. That might sound old school or overly simple, but it really works for us. So where could you put something like that in your regular rhythm to deepen your gratitude and shift your gaze in that direction? Where is there something that you could just incorporate? And it you know, it just takes a minute or two just to write a couple things each day, or it doesn't even we don't even do it every day. We just do it every few days and then look up there and see them. So another gratitude practice that we discussed last year that I think bears re repeating is a gift that a friend of mine gave to my children. So my children are at that time, we're both in college, and she created what I call a little box of blessings. So it's a little decorative box, and inside is all sorts of little notes, inspiration, affirmations. There were a few scriptures in there, just all sorts of feel-good moments, if you will, in this box of blessings. And the the idea is that they would take this to college, which they did, and then they when they were feeling a little off, they could just open up that box and look in there and just have a moment of joy, little tiny moments of joy. I mean, what a great gift idea. It doesn't cost much. I mean, you you have to buy the little box, maybe a decorative box for your recipient, but then just pieces of paper in there and all of your ideas can be written down. So that is a really great way to create more joyful moments and more gratitude in someone else's life. You could give it to them. And I would think that as you are creating the notes, it creates some gratitude in your own life. So I thought that that was a neat thing that maybe you want to spread some joy to the world around you. Now, speaking of spreading joy to a recipient, I want to remind you that what's coming up this fall at Create Harmony is our seasonal series Peaceful Pathways box. So we have created, we're partnering with Petal and Pink, which is a mental wellness boutique here in our town. And we've created at Create Harmony, we've created the five meditations that are in each box. So if you bought this box, you would get five guided meditations. And each of the meditations are very immersive. They're very, it feels like you're actually having an experience, stepping out of your life and taking a moment sitting in your cozy nook, or taking a moment sipping a cup of tea, or taking a moment looking into the fire as you're sitting by the fireside. So that's in the box. You have a link to those five meditations, as well as really neat and unique gift items or treasures, what we were calling peaceful treasures that you that sort of reinforce this experience. Um, there's in the in the winter box, there's a cool mug, there's a neat candle, just all sorts of peaceful things that are coming up. And that the launch for this, the sales of these things is November 1st. So we're almost there. And you will learn all about this by going to our website. You can go to um mycreateharmony.com to find out more. If you want to order, mark your calendar. It's a great gift idea. Who wouldn't want to receive a box full of peaceful items? And then there'll be four boxes per year. So this is a winter one, there'll be spring, summer, and fall. So don't forget about that. That could be a blessing to you. And for our closing today, I'm gonna share a prayer. And this is a prayer that we used in a meeting recently, and I really liked it, and I thought that it um will be a blessing to you. And it goes like this. Gracious God, as we go forth from this time together, may your love be in our hearts, may your words be on our lips, may our arms outstretch to those you want us to embrace. May our eyes see your will, may our ears hear your voice, may our feet follow your path, may your kingdom on earth prosper and grow, and may it be soining us today. So glad you were here to talk about how to have more gratitude in your daily rhythms. Hope you'll come back next week. And until next time, peace.