At this time of year, our collective minds turn to what we are most grateful for in our lives. As the holiday season begins, we gather with the family we were blessed with and count those other worldly gifts we have.

For many of us, it is our health, family and success. We offer thanks to God for the gifts He has given us. We thank those who surround us for being in our lives through thick and thin.

And what originated as a religious celebration has become one centered on stuffing ourselves with turkey and all the dressings and watching parades and football games on television. For many of us, Thanksgiving Day probably included a couple hours of planning Black Friday shopping and feeling grateful for a day off in the middle of the workweek.

Among the blessings I count personally are a loving family, a fantastic group of people to work with every day and my continued good health. I am also grateful this year for the skill of the surgeon who successfully repaired a problem with my foot.

Even more than that, I thank God for having the right people in the right places with the right knowledge as my mom was having a stroke earlier this year. From the researchers who developed the medication that most likely saved her life to the emergency room staff that knew how to treat her before the stroke progressed any further, our entire family is grateful. With their intervention, what would have been a major debilitating stroke became only a minor setback for her health-wise.

Counting our blessings like these at Thanksgiving is a tried and true ritual, but what about the rest of the year?

How often do we express our thanks to one another and to God without the prompting of a national holiday?

One of the practices our family has is to say prayers together every night. During this ritual, we try to include prayers of thanks for the blessings we encountered during the day. Some days are easier than others to pick out a particular blessing, but we nonetheless make the attempt each evening.

A reader on Facebook suggested living with an “attitude of gratitude” and “paying it forward.”

As we wind our way through this next month of hustle and bustle on the way to Christmas, my hope is to remember to adopt a more consistent “attitude of gratitude.” To simply change one’s mindset could make all the difference in finding the daily blessings for which we should be giving thanks.

My prayer is that you and your families have a blessed holiday season.