our minds matter

● Practice & promote gratitude
● Promote positive thinking and hope
● Encourage folks to reflect on the good things in life

• Gratitude is a simple and extremely effective way to improve mental health. In fact, there’s plenty of research that shows that giving thanks  can help people sleep better, decrease their stress, and improve their relationships with others. And for teens specifically, there’s evidence that keeping a gratitude journal decreased materialism and increased generosity (NPR, 2018).
• While practicing gratitude is simple, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It can be hard to remind ourselves to feel grateful for little things and big things every day, especially if no one else around us is doing that. These gratitude jars can take practicing gratitude from an individual challenge to a group project full of warm fuzzy feelings!

• Entire school

• Principal
• Teachers and staff who can promote the jars

• First, get permission from your principal to place gratitude jars around your school building
• Next, get some jars or boxes and place them, along with some paper and writing utensils, around the school.
  • You can see if the art teacher at your school can lend you jars or boxes.
• Make sure that you place them in accessible areas where a lot of people will see it, but also make sure that it is not in a place where the jar would get in the way. 
  • Some good locations might include the front office, near the main doors, a vacant corner of the cafeteria, and other high traffic areas.
• Place instructions by the jar so folks know what it’s for
  • A simple note that says “Write down one thing you’re grateful for and place it in the jar. This is anonymous and some responses may be read aloud on the morning news.” is all you need.
• Each morning of the campaign, read aloud one of the things from the gratitude jars on the intercom during morning announcements and remind folks about the jars.
• When your campaign is over, make sure to collect all the materials from around the school.

• Spread word about the gratitude jars in the following ways:
  • Announcements on the morning news or over the intercom
  • Post on your club’s social media and re-share to your stories
  • Remind your classmates at the start of your classes before the bell rings

• If you get even just a few responses, that’s a success! 
• Pay attention to which jars got the most responses so you can be sure to place jars there in the future if you run this campaign again.

• What did you learn from this campaign?
• How can you practice gratitude every day?
• Is this something we should do more than once at our school?

• We suggest leaving the jars up for about two weeks, but you can do what works best for your school!
• Check out this article about an OMM club that did this campaign a few years ago!