It’s November, the month best known as “Time to do the Christmas shopping” and “Oh wait, I need to remember how to cook a turkey.”

By the time Thanksgiving rolls around and you’re asking your family what they’re grateful for, it can be difficult to think of anything. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Especially if you start early on in the month, you have a chance to start shifting your mindset so when it comes time to say something you’re thankful for, you’ll be able to pick one of many rather than scrambling for one.

What’s a simple way to do this?

1 | Pick a friend (or a journal).

2 | Tell your friend (or write in your journal) three things you’re grateful for every day.

This will be difficult at first, since we often live in a mindset that focuses on how things went wrong, rather than how things went right. But by practicing with our friends or our journal, we can easily turn this into a prayer of thanksgiving every day.

When you start looking for things to be thankful for rather than things to be angry about, you’ll start to see them in your day to day life. You can be grateful for all sorts of things — coffee, health, a car, and a job come to mind right now, and that’s off the top of my head.

You can do it, too. And of the above options, I suggest a friend over a journal, or maybe do both. The reason it can be helpful to tell a friend is that you’ll have someone asking you what you’re grateful for today. A journal can’t talk to you, but a person can. A person can remind you of your goals and why you started doing this in the first place. Even more than that, though, a person can celebrate with you and be thankful with you. That community is priceless.