The Best (and Easiest) Challenge Ever

If you had to look back on the past month, how many times would you say you woke up with positive thoughts about the day ahead of you? Would you say 60% of the time? 25%? 100%?

If you are someone who wakes up each day with nothing but positive thoughts in your head, then keep reading. You are a rare gem and we need more people like you!

If you're more like me, however, and tend to start your days with thoughts of dread or stress, you are also in the right place.

Before I tell you why it's important to stick around, I must clue you in on a great community that Hannah, a friend of mine from high school, recently started.

"First World Gratitude" (FWG), is a Facebook page that offers a counter to the "First World Problems" humor we know and love.  The community reminds us to be grateful for the things we have and balance out the negative things we tend to focus on or joke about.

In a recent post, FWG presented its readers with a simple challenge: to start each day thinking about something they are grateful for. "What a simple and beautiful idea," I thought, "to consciously choose to have a positive start to your day." When I tried to think of something, I actually had a tough time narrowing it down to one thing. After overthinking it for longer than I'd like to admit, I decided to choose something that started with the letter 'A'. Tomorrow would be dedicated to something that started with the letter 'B', and so on and so on. Through the marriage of FWG's challenge and my own neuroses to organize everything under the sun, "The ABCs of Gratitude" was born.

For the next 26 days, I will be partnering with "First World Gratitude" and posting a note about something that I am grateful for. Each day's topic will correspond to the respective letter of the alphabet and lead us to the most grateful day of the year, Thanksgiving.

Hannah and I are very excited to take on this challenge, and we hope you will join us! Get started by joining the FWG community here and commenting on the daily posts. You can also participate by commenting on my blog or Twitter posts (@BeetisBeautiful). From apple pie, to a really good hug from a friend, we all have so much to be grateful for. Start following the FWG and Beet is Beautiful communities today and join us as we kick things off with the letter 'A' tomorrow!