2023 Guardian Revival Holiday Gift Guide
Looking for gift ideas for your loved ones, friends, coworkers, adventure buddies, or furry friends? Our holiday gift guide is brought to you by the team at Guardian Revival.
Thanks to our wide range of expertise (and hobbies!), we’ve got recommendations for those on a path for self-improvement & exploration, wellness, creativity, aspiring & skilled musicians, outdoor lovers & athletes, and canine companions.
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Affiliate Disclaimer: If you click through and shop via the following links, we may earn referral revenue — at no additional cost to you — which goes towards supporting our non-profit organization. We appreciate your generosity in enabling us to continue providing programs to benefit the mental health and well-being of our guardians.
Books Worth Reading
Guardian Revival CEO and co-founder Alex Othmer makes a practice of giving the team books he’s found inspirational & useful. These three recommendations offer opportunities for reflection and improvement.
It’s not about getting better at some external game or ranking, but about finding ways to make our own lives better — for ourselves, our loved ones, and the things we care about. And who doesn’t want that?
Atomic Habits
For anyone interested in building good habits and breaking old ones, Atomic Habits is a must-read book that provides a game-changing practical framework for improving your life every day. A few of our key takeaways:
Determine what you truly care about & want to achieve
Small habits have big impacts
Progress, not perfection
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
Author Atul Gawande has written multiple best-selling books and is a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.
The Checklist Manifesto provides valuable insights into how something as seemingly simple as a checklist can make all the difference in the world, whether you’re dealing with something as serious as getting it right in the operating room or just trying to improve the way your business works.
Stillness Is the Key
Most recently, Alex shared Stillness Is the Key, noting that the book has made a tremendous impact on his mental health during challenging periods.
“Holiday draws on timeless Stoic and Buddhist philosophy to show why slowing down is the secret weapon for those charging ahead… In this book, he outlines a path for achieving this ancient, but urgently necessary way of living. Drawing on a wide range of history's greatest thinkers, from Confucius to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius to Thich Nhat Hanh, John Stuart Mill to Nietzsche, he argues that stillness is not mere inactivity, but the doorway to self-mastery, discipline, and focus.” – Publisher’s description
Gifts for Wellness & Health
Wearables & Sleep Trackers
There are a lot of options out there for wellness wearables to track your fitness, sleep, and other health details. Sometimes the feedback can be surprising, but the accountability & insights are often what make the biggest difference for people, helping them become more aware & mindful of their behavior and its implications for their body.
Apple Watch is a popular option for iPhone owners, and it has a mix of health features including sleep & workout tracking plus fall & crash detection
Oura Ring is specifically designed to track your health through a variety of biometric data
WHOOP 4.0 is worn like a watch and continuously monitors your heart rate, temperature, activity, sleep, and more
Garmin makes a range of watches rooted in its GPS capabilities — the Garmin 945 Forerunner model is designed for triathlons (and training)
Wake-up Light
Instead of waking up to the sounds of a blaring alarm clock in the morning, start the day with a soothing, simulated sunrise from a Phillips wake-up light. Using this gadget instead of a standard alarm can help alleviate the feeling of grogginess that many of us experience in the morning, replacing it with a more pleasant & gradual wake-up call.
Hatch makes lights & sound machines for kids and adults. Easily controlled with an app, you can set nighttime & morning routines, leave on a nightlight (or set it to a timer), and provide soothing sleep sounds as well as wakeup music.
Meditation Apps
While it might feel like our phones are already cluttered with endless portals to distraction, these meditation apps can help clear your mind:
Headspace is a popular option with a user-friendly interface and a landing page with a daily meditation and recommendations for you based on the time of day & your past meditations on the app. There are single and course meditations, plus sections for kids. Headspace also has stretching, dance, yoga, and fitness video classes.
Waking Up is another meditation app, and it also features “lessons and conversations on Stoicism, effective altruism, sleep, psychedelics research, and more.” The creator of Waking Up, Sam Harris, is a neuroscientist who leads the introductory theory course on the app.
Calm is a top mental health app, offering meditations, breathing exercises, music, and soundscapes. Their Sleep Stories has hundreds of titles available, some of which are read by celebrity narrators.
Gifts for Art Lovers & Aspiring Creatives
The Artist’s Way
While this book is billed as being for creatives, it’s surprisingly useful for any application in life. So not only would it make a great gift for someone who feels creatively unconfident or struggling with a block, but it might be just the thing for a student or recent graduate (or perhaps anyone facing life shifts or career changes). The Artist’s Way is a helpful guide to better understanding ourselves, learning what we want, and figuring out how to go after it.
Our G-Connect Writing Workshop instructor (and local Carmel English Teacher) has referenced author Julia Cameron’s other book, The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life, "I believe we all come into life as writers." Whether it's poetry, songwriting, or storytelling, the freedom to express and record through written language is a powerful thing. And it’s truly available to us all. Don’t let preexisting notions limit you or your loved ones from imagining or exploring something new…
Art Supplies
A great beginner-friendly option is watercolor pencils. You draw with them like regular colored pencils, and then can paint with water to activate the watercolors and mix & move the paint on your paper. An art therapist we’ve worked with likes having these on-hand for people who might feel intimidated picking up a paintbrush — the pencils are more familiar & provide an easy entry point to watercolor and painting.
For artists who spend a lot of their time out and about — or aspiring painters who need a starting kit, this compact Sakura Koi watercolor set is perfect for creating beautiful paintings anywhere. This set of 30 colors provides enough range that you can mix almost any color, and the included water brush means you won’t even need to coordinate a separate water source on the go.
Sakura brand is probably best known for their Micron pens, which offer archival-quality waterproof, permanent inks in a variety of colors and thicknesses. Oh, and they made the original Gelly Roll gel pens, too (still available, plus new colors still being released).
Holbein watercolors are another great paint option. Unlike the Sakura Koi travel set, these are not solid pan paints but artist-quality tubes of wet paint that can be used either immediately in very small quantities or left to dry in your palette for later re-wetting & use.
Paper & Travel Notebooks
This tape-bound watercolor paper pad is great for beginners who want to practice their craft — it’s good to keep materials available that encourage us to worry less about how much we’re using and focus on exploration & practice. Don’t fear the blank page.
Anyone who’s committed to their daily practice of Morning Pages (a staple of The Artist’s Way, above) and other creative endeavors is probably going to need a lot of paper. Some people feel strongly about special journals, in which case, we encourage you to find one that speaks to your gift recipient, but others find the less precious supplies get more use — and we happen to be fans of taking action.
These inexpensive kraft paper notebooks come in packs of 48, so you can spread them around… maybe everyone gets a notebook with a special message from you inside? LEUCHTTURM1917 and Moleskine are popular brands for artists, writers, designers, architects, and anyone else who likes good quality notebooks with a ton of options: white, dotted, lined, soft cover, hardcover, different colored covers, and sizes galore.
Gifts for Musicians
Music is a powerful pathway for relaxation, connection, and healing — whether we practice it alone or with others.
Free Lessons
Our music program, Encore, offers free music lessons via Zoom to veterans and first responders. Our program director Matt Sorena has over 15 years of music experience, a Masters in Music Therapy, and a Bachelors in Music. He can teach guitar, ukulele, bass, piano, and rhythmic instruments, plus music theory. Encourage them to sign up for Encore to get started or reach out to hello@guardianrevival.org with any questions.
Squier Stratocaster Bundle
Perfect for beginner guitarists who need an entire setup to get started, the Squier Strat bundle comes with a guitar, amplifier, gig bag, guitar cable, guitar tuner, guitar strap, and more.
Valeton Rushead Max Pocket Amp
This pocket amp is great for anyone who wants to rock and roll all night without waking the neighbors. All you need to do is plug it into your guitar with a pair of headphones, and you’re good to go!
See more instruments & accessories in our gift guide for music lovers.
Gifts for Outdoors & Activities
GRAYL GeoPress 24oz Water Purifier Bottle
Recommended by our Fieldcraft Survival Skills instructor, this bottle is great for adventurers who spend their time in remote places and need consistent access to clean drinking water if their supply ever runs low. The GRAYL Geopress is a lightweight filtration system that requires no setup time and is good for 65 gallons of purified water with each filter.
Solo Stove
For those who haven’t mastered our fieldcraft fire-starting skills yet, or if the idea of a nice portable fire, Solo Stove offers a range of products — from fire pits to pizza ovens.
REI Co-op Flexlite Air Chair
One of our Another Summit outdoor leaders brings this nylon and aluminum chair on every camping trip, and it’s lightweight enough to carry on backpacking trips (just 1 pound!).
Yoga Mat & Blocks
Perfect for yogis on the go or for anyone who needs a portable workout mat for exercise, Gaiam’s foldable yoga mat is compact enough to fit in an overnight bag or backpack and light enough that you won’t have to worry about extra weight when you toss it in your bag for a flight.
Cork or foam yoga blocks can make a big difference in your practice. Think of them as bringing the floor to you — sometimes, they help make tough poses a bit easier for beginners until they develop the length or strength needed for the full posture. However, blocks are also used by advanced yogis and experienced practitioners because each body is built differently. There’s no benefit to overextending and losing the benefit of a pose when these tools exist to support our bodies where we need it.
See more gear recommendations in our gift guide for outdoor lovers.
Gifts for Dog Lovers & Pet Parents
Licking Mat & KONG Cones
Dogs like (and need) to work for their food — it can help slow down their feeding & improve digestion. This silicone licking mat and KONG dog toys are two options you can use, and both are freezer and dishwasher safe. Tips from experience: apply yummy wet foods (like pumpkin, peanut butter, or cream cheese) along with dry food and freeze it all together to make for easy meal prep for your pup.
Braided Dog Collars
These beautiful dog collars are made of braided leather with warm, soft lining and can be personalized with your dog’s name. Recommended by one of our Outdoor Leaders, they’re great for dogs of any size.
Springer Flip Portable Dog Water Bottle
This 20-ounce portable dog water bottle is easy to use and BPA-free, both of which are important in helping keep your pup well-hydrated on long walks or hikes.
See all the suggestions for furry friends in our dog gift guide.
Amazon Gift Card
If none of these gifts is a great match for the person you’re shopping for, you can always pick up an Amazon gift card and give your loved one the freedom to choose the gift they want this holiday season.
Guardian Giving Campaign
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention our special fundraising opportunity right now — every dollar you donate to Guardian Revival is currently matched by a generous donor.
Guardian Revival is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization chartered to revive and preserve the mental health and well-being of veterans and first responders — our guardians — at no cost to them.
The holidays can be challenging for our guardians, so not only is this an impactful opportunity to give a gift that will truly make a difference in someone’s life, every supporter (at any amount) shows our guardians that we care.