The Gratitude Hot Seat

A Thanksgiving Exercise to do with Family and Friends

We all take things for granted. It’s easy for us to forget about the things in our life that we are lucky to have. For example, if you are able-bodied, you probably forget to be grateful for you ability to walk. Often, we take our relationships for granted. We forget to tell our family, friends, and loved ones how much we appreciate them. Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity to tell your loved ones how much you appreciate them, and you can do it with the following exercise that I call The Gratitude Hot Seat.

Setup
Add an empty chair to the thanksgiving dinner table. This will be the Gratitude Hot Seat.

Exercise
Each person at thanksgiving table will take turns sitting in the gratitude hotseat. The person sitting in the gratitude hot seat will listen to the others express what they appreciate about them. Going around the table, every person takes a turn saying what they appreciate about the person in the hot seat. 

Conclusion
I came up with this exercise for a thanksgiving dinner with my family a few years ago. I learned things about my family that I had not considered before. It’s amazing what happens at a family dinner when only one person speaks at a time and the focus of the dinner is about expressing what you appreciate about one another.