Zainab Susi (she/her)
Languages Spoken: English; Urdu
Stage of Life: Empty Nester
What brought me to Champaign-Urbana: Career/job
Areas of Expertise: Downtown Champaign, Mahomet, Fitness, Running/Walking
Advice for New Residents: Champaign-Urbana offers a lot to all ages. If you don’t know where to find it, ask around. Most of the people are very helpful and friendly. It’s a small town but very much affordable and easy to go around anywhere, even to big cities like Chicago or Indianapolis.
My Gratitude Jar: Eight Years Later the Gratitude Jar Continues…
It’s hard to believe that 2025 marks eight years of keeping a gratitude jar. When I first started, it was simply a New Year’s resolution. My intention was to focus on all the things I was grateful for for the whole year. On the last day of the year, I would open the jar with my family and read all the notes. My girls and I enjoyed reading notes about memories collected through the year that we had long forgotten. Even when I had forgotten the events of the year, the notes in the jar reminded me of how good the year was.
This is how the jar works. Whenever anything small or big happens that I am grateful for, I write it down on a piece of paper with the date and put it in the jar. I keep the jar on my desk so it is always within reach and as a constant reminder of how many things for which I am grateful. It’s very easy to focus on the negative. We tend to dwell on negativity longer than we should.
As many of you know I have a habit of keeping a journal and I am proud to say that my family has also adopted this habit. On the last day of the year, we all take out our journals and privately look back on the whole year. We sometimes make realistic New Year’s resolutions. It has become our year-end tradition.
When 2024 first started, I was excited about the year and eager to accomplish my resolutions. I created my thankful jar and named it “My 8th Year Gratitude Jar. We all know how many sad events took place in 2024. In the midst of all that, my thankful jar kept getting full. Believe it or not the 2024 jar was more full than the previous ones.
Before I started the gratitude jar, I used to think that I didn’t have enough of many things and worried that something would go wrong. Lots of times, many things happened right after each other and I never received a break. Once I changed my mindset, started focusing on gratitude, and started appreciating each day, my perspective changed. I started feeling I had more than enough, felt so rich in every area of my life, and so grateful.
It’s a choice we make every day to be happy and positive, or unhappy and negative. You don’t have to spend a penny to start a gratitude jar. I used my empty salsa jar, and any scrap paper I found in the house. The only rule I made for my jar was to always find something for which I can be grateful. The most important thing was to be grateful to be alive.
The jar is very powerful and helps keep me grounded. I’m looking forward to continuing the tradition in 2025.
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” -Oprah Winfrey