It has suddenly become very autumnal. All around us the trees are turning, the evenings suddenly are dark early. Hat-boot-jumper season has returned. 
And inevitably, the shops are not only full of Hallowe-en stuff but also Christmas stuff. [Random side note – one popular budget supermarket that we frequent is selling Christmas puds with a use by date of April 2025 – why?!]
All of this means that we are more than three quarters of the way through 2023. Yikes.
Are you still practicing gratitude?
I don’t simply mean in a general way, being thankful and all that. Which is excellent and important, and oft referenced in these musings (see here and here for great encouragements).
What I am encouraging you to consider is this:
Are you are still filling your jar of good things?
This idea was mused here by me at the start of the year. The concept is simple: weekly, take a few minutes on your own or with family members to note down one thing you are grateful for. Pop that wee note in your jar. At the end of the year, the jar will be stuffed full. Full of joyous moments both small and large that represent some of the good things of this year.
And practicing gratitude going into the new year knows no better start than to read through all that we noted with thankfulness last year. The physical and psychological benefits of regularly practicing gratitude are well documented.
This was our jar at the beginning of January:
By mid May, you can see that there are lots of pieces of paper in it, but still a lot of empty space. 
We fell out of the habit of filling our jar for a few weeks after our holiday. Common isn’t it – how hard it can be to get back into good habits when they have been broken for a season.
But we have caught up, and our jar now looks like this – stuffed full, but with a few more weeks to go to the end of the year. 
Now there are only two of us adding to it every week. But that in itself is a marker of time passing. This has been a momentous year in this house. And when we empty the jar and read its contents, it will serve to remind us and record the passing seasons of this year. Sometimes four in the house, sometimes only two.
But always connected, and always choosing to take a few minutes to stop and practice gratitude. Even as many of our emotions have been mixed (that is another whole jar, more on that here), there is always something to be thankful for.
So what about you?
If you started a jar at the beginning of the year, but it has fallen out of being a habit, perhaps choose to restart again for these remaining weeks. There is no guilt, shame or right/wrong here. This is simply an encouragement to keep going with practicing gratitude.
And if this is new to you, read the original post, and there is no better time than today to get started!