Hello, this is A.J. Hoag. I will teach you to speak English powerfully.

Welcome to the Effortless English show. A special birthday episode today, it's my birthday.

So welcome. I hope you're doing well.

So I am live from America this time and today, because it's my birthday, I have a special topic.

And my topic for today is gratitude.

I was thinking about what I should talk about

on my birthday, what would be a good topic to discuss and I thought

of many different ideas and but I finally decided on gratitude I think that a birthday is a good time

to look back on the previous year and just to think of all the things you're grateful for.

And this is a good practice. all the things you're grateful for.

And this is a good practice to do daily.

In fact, I now have a daily gratitude practice

that I do as part of writing my journals. I combine it with

journaling. In previous episodes I have discussed writing a journal each day.

Well, gratitude is a great thing to focus on when you do that.

And what I do, I just do it for five minutes or so is I just write down you know everything I'm grateful for so I'll start with you know like my wife why all the things I'm grateful for about tomorrow I and I'll write about that each day and I always start with that and then after

that I might write other things too about you know I'm grateful for my health I'm

grateful for my health, I'm grateful for you, the effortless English community,

I'm grateful for, I don't know, you know, on and on and on, many, many things.

I'll discuss more of my specific things today. But it's a good practice

for you to do too, but it really puts you in a better mood. Even when I'm not feeling great,

when I do this, it makes me feel better.

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