Hi, I'm Jim Denison with Dennis in Forum, and this is the Daily article for Thursday, November 22, 2018.

Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday, or so we think.

We tend to believe that the pilgrims invented today's holiday when they held a feast to celebrate their successful fall harvest.

However, they borrowed the tradition from the English.

And the English celebration is nowhere as ancient as the Japanese national holiday, known as

Kinro-Kanchi Nohi, which means Labor Thanksgiving Day, which goes back more than 2,000 years.

The Chinese have been celebrating their version of Thanksgiving even longer with a mid-autum

festival that goes back 2,500 years. Why is giving thanks such a universal phenomenon?

Because it's so good for us. One problem some of us face on this Thanksgiving day is that we don't

feel like giving thanks. If we're facing hardships,

Thanksgiving can be more obligatory than celebratory. However, it's when we don't feel like being thankful that we most need to be thankful. Time recently published a fascinating article titled

Six Ways to Instantly Be a More Positive Person. The author notes that optimism is essential to our overall

health. For instance, when Harvard researchers studied 70,000 women over an eight-year period,

they discovered that the most optimistic quartile had an almost 30% lower risk of dying from

several major causes of death compared with women in the least optimistic

quartile. How can we be more positive whatever our circumstances or challenges? The Time article

encourages us to savor the good, to set reminders such as positive quotes where we can see them,

to do something nice for someone else, to phone a friend for help with

challenges, and to say thanks. The last suggestion is important because, as one expert notes,

our interpretation of events influences our emotions more than the events themselves.

At the top of Times list, however, is this vital suggestion, reframe or divert.

Psychologists encourage us to accept what we cannot change, then reframe the situation in a way that looks for opportunities in the midst of challenges.

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