You hear it all the time – “everyday find 3 things that you are grateful for, write them down and you will start being a more grateful person.” Wholeheartedly, and superficially, I believe this to be true!

I have had a gratitude journal next to my bed for years and I practice daily gratitude on and off. When I’m on, each night, I would write down the three things I was grateful for, so that my last thoughts about my day were reflected in positivity, love and hope. I occasionally read through my journal to entertain my now older self, what my younger self was grateful for. There are simple gratitude’s in my journal, such as coffee, grilled cheese sandwiches, my bed, air conditioning, TV and then there are big things like the safety of loved ones, family and answered prayers.

They say the act of finding and having daily gratitude is about perspective; being able to look outside of ourselves, to find the goodness in our lives and that the daily practice helps to retrain our brain to search for gratitude throughout the day. It’s easy to get caught up in our day to day and depending on our perspective in life (glass half-full or glass half-empty), we tend to see the world through the perspective that help us solidify the narrative we have for our story, our lives. So when we can reach outside of ourselves, searching and spending time in gratitude, it helps to knock us off our axis to see things from a different angel; it allows us to come up for air, even if just for a moment, when feeling buried underneath piles of responsibilities, obligations, hardship, etc.

For me, practicing and finding gratitude helps to knock me off my axis of ‘surviving’ and feeling like a victim to my life. For most of my life, surviving to the next day was a necessity – so I have become accustomed to being in survival mode; only focused on getting to the next step and constantly on the search for the hurdles (aka: hardships, negativity, self-pity) I have to get through, to get to the next day. While my need to survive has come in handy, and has allowed me to get to where I am in life, our greatest strengths are also our greatest weakness and my ‘survival’ mentality can keep me from looking UP in life (where I tend to look DOWN at my feet and getting one foot in front of the other), keeping me from the boundless opportunities, beauty and blessings life has to offer. So practicing daily gratitude helps me to reflect outside of my narrative, to find the goodness and positivity in my life that can sometimes hide behind the obstacles, hardships, exhaustion and defeat.

So while I know that the act of finding gratitude to be powerful and true, and have practiced it regularly in my life, the start of this holiday season I was finding it extraordinarily hard to practice what I preached.

I don’t know what it is about the holidays, but they have an incredible ability to turn regular days into such powerful and emotionally charged days, don’t they? Take for example Thursday – for 51 Thursday’s in a year, a Thursday is just a Thursday. Its greatest power is that it’s the day before Friday, which means that the weekend is close. However, that ONE Thursday of the year, where Thursday NOW means its Thanksgiving, that Thursday miraculously has a completely different meaning and carries with it so many emotions, dreams, hopes, fears, love, hurt, family, loneliness. . . . . . . still a Thursday, but gosh how different that Thursday can be!

I found this to be ever so true for me this year, on this Thanksgiving; it wasn’t a normal Thursday and it definitely wasn’t a normal Thanksgiving. I decided to write about my day as I realized while I was experiencing it, that there are probably soo many others this holiday feeling and going through the exact same thing – hoping that if someone else was having a hard time or felt alone this holiday, that they, at the very least, knew that they weren’t alone in those feelings!

I went into this Thanksgiving with the intention to keep it open, free and flexible. I took on a part-time seasonal job on the weekends, to help pay off the last of my car so that I could go into 2019 debt free, so I knew that my time and schedule was going to be hectic, limited and busy; the thought of planning, scheduling and over committing for Thanksgiving was too much at the time to add to my plate. I felt good about my decision, about going into Thanksgiving unconventional and nontraditional! That was until it was Thanksgiving day and it was unconventional and nontraditional.

I won’t go into a lot of details of the day, but rather I’ll write about the roller coaster of feelings and the lessons I learned during the ride. My son was with me during the morning and was going off to his dad’s for Thanksgiving dinner, so I decided instead of making him sit through two Thanksgiving meals, I would take him to the movies in the morning and just make a light lunch. Unfortunately, right after the movies he peace’d out to go to his dad’s (the joys of co-parenting & now having a kid that can drive himself around) and found myself completely and utterly alone. (which I knew was going to be the case for part of my day). Out of nowhere, a lifetime of emotions came crashing down and I found myself just swallowed up by them. My unworthy self-truth and ‘victim’ story rose to the surface like a tsunami, taking over and completely devastating my thoughts, feelings and emotions. While every inch of my body knew that the feelings were dramatic and unnecessary, once that record begins to play in your head, it’s hard to turn it off. I found myself feeling sorry for myself and questioning “why” (the dirtiest word in the negative self-talk dictionary). “Why am I alone on Thanksgiving?” “Why does everyone else have a family?” “Why do I always feel like an outsider?” “Why does everyone else seem to have it all?”

Anyone else familiar with that self-talk record? It’s an oldie but goodie in my head!  I found myself sitting in my room with dinosaur tears rolling down my face, my head in my hands and just sat there for a few minutes. And then I looked up and told myself that I refused to feel this way; that I refused to let myself go down this path. My ‘survival’ mode kicked in, but in a good way this time! I knew how to put one foot in front of the other, so this time I took those footsteps to walk myself in a different direction. I put on my workout clothes and marched my way down to my garage to get a workout in (they say working out releases endorphins, so I figured it would help). I blasted Lauren Daigle’s new album (was going to type CD but realized that we don’t by CD’s anymore – this is one of those ‘adult’ moments when we refer to things from the past as if they are still around), “Look Up Child.” I did my 20 minute workout and still was in a funk, so I took myself on a long walk. Look Up Child was playing on repeat. I found myself on the walk, mouthing the words to her songs, tears rolling in and out like the waves of the ocean and just feeling the music in my soul (if you haven’t listened to this album, you need to get it – it’s AH.MAZING). As I was getting lost in my self-truth story of feeling unworthy and self-pity, I would catch myself and try to rewrite my script, actively taking over my thoughts and telling myself all of the reasons why my self-truth was a lie. It was about an hour of tug-a-war in my head; back and forth between my negative self-truth and my higher self-truth.

When I got back to my house I felt a little better, a little stronger but still felt lonely, so I reached out to my ‘bible study mom’ to see if I could still come over to her house for Thanksgiving. A big part of me just wanted to sit on my couch and get lost in movies but I knew that it wasn’t going to be helpful. She had invited me earlier in the week, but since I was convinced I wanted unconventional and untraditional, I didn’t fully commit. While she didn’t respond right away, due to preparing a Thanksgiving meal for about 20 people, I decided I was just going to go anyways – I knew she wouldn’t turn me away if I just showed up. So I put on my ‘big girl panties’ and forced myself to get ready. When I was a stay at home mom, the first 5 years of my son’s life, I used to force myself to get showered, dressed and ready each day. It was a way of feeling like I accomplished something that day and it always made me feel better, so that is what I did; I got myself showered, did my hair, did my makeup and put on an outfit that made me feel good. Luckily, she texted me in the middle of all of this – saying I was most welcomed to join (might have been a little awkward had I really just shown up). And so that is what I did. I went over to her house, to and unknown family and refused to give into my self-truth.

In all honesty, it was a little awkward and there were moments where I felt like an outsider, both in their family but also in mine; wondering how it was that I ended up at someone else’s family Thanksgiving – but, I kept myself busy (pretending I needed a drink as an excuse to walk to another location and not stand like a wallflower, grasping at an opportunity to help prepare the mashed potatoes so that I busied myself and had something to do) and eventually started joining in on conversations, meeting the family and finding a place that felt comfortable and welcomed. We had a lovely dinner, I met new people and eventually found myself lost in conversation and gratitude, rather than loneliness and pity.

I went home that night with a full tummy and a full heart! I had overcome my feelings and rewrote my script. It took all day and it wasn’t a smooth process, was more like a beautiful disaster, but at the end of the day I took control and dug deep to overcome my feelings and to find gratitude in my day, my life and my story.

As I ended my day and reflected on it, I realized that if I was feeling this way, there must be so many more people out there feeling the exact same way. I have so many things to be grateful for and so many blessings, so if I was going through this – I knew others had to be feeling the same. I wanted to share my experience and how I was able to dig deep, to get out of my funk, in hopes that it might help someone else during the holiday (or just in life). So here are my humble recommendations and things I do, to help find gratitude when I feel less than grateful.

Tips for Digging Your Way to China to Find Gratitude:

1.       Have Grace!

-          One of the definitions of grace is to ‘do honor or credit to, by one’s presence.’ So give yourself grace, honor and credit to your feelings this holiday, if you find yourself in a less than festive and jolly mood. You more than likely have the feelings for a legitimate reason and beating yourself up for having whatever feelings you have, won’t help you to process and heal. I find that when I give into my emotions and give them space to be felt, I can more easily accept them and move on from them. When I fight them, I end up just being more emotional because I get mad at myself and start laying on more guilt, pity and frustration. The important piece to remember though is that you need to feel them, but you can’t let them stay! They can be a visitor in your home, but not a roommate.

2.       Break the Cycle!

-          Once you have given yourself grace and spent some time in your feelings, you need to break the cycle; the cycle that is keeping you in your thoughts and feelings and repeating your narrative over and over (that self-talk record that you have stored in your head). This is different for everyone and it might take having to do a variety of things to actually break the cycle but all that matters is that you find what works for you and that you take the initiative to set something in motion. Some recommendations I have found useful are;

•   Exercise: it does release endorphins and it’s a great outlet to let go of some frustration, plus it’s hard to get stuck in your self-talk when you can barely breath or pushing yourself through a set of 15 reps and can barely get to #8.

•   Listen to Music: put on your favorite artist or genre of music and just get lost in the music. Music really does have a healing power and can touch your soul. It helps if you listen through headphones, as the music envelops you and is easier to get distracted in the songs, rather than your thoughts. My go-to’s are Gavin Degraw and Lauren Daigle.

•   Journal: Retell your story! Write down what it is that is going on, the areas that you are struggling with and then rewrite those feelings. Similar to the act of writing down daily gratitude, to look for the positive – take note of the things in your life that take you from your self-truth (unworthiness, unloved, undeserving, unintelligent) to your higher-truth (worthy, loved, capable, deserving, smart, powerful). Write down and tell yourself all of the ways that your self-truth isn’t true – prove it wrong. While me default self-truth is feeling unworthy, I know that my higher truth is that I am not only worthy but worthy of infinite possibilities. I remind myself of all that I have accomplished, all that I have preserved through, my strength, my ability to help people, etc. When I can rewrite my script, I give less power to my self-truth and reprogram myself to my higher truth.

 3.       Put Yourself Out There!  

-          The #1 thing we want to do when we are stuck in our negative loop is to retreat. We want to hide inside our turtle shell; throw on old sweats, hide under our covers and get lost in Netflix. And while there is a time and place for that, if you want to break the loop, you’ve got to put yourself out there, especially in the moments that you don’t want to. If you do only one of these recommendations, I would say this is the most important one, as it is the biggest and scariest one (greater the risk, greater the reward). So if you find yourself stuck, feeling down or have that loop on repeat – find a way to put yourself out there. Get up & get dressed - feel good about yourself. Go to the party you didn’t want to go to. Take yourself out to dinner. Reach out to people – chances are there is someone else who could use the company OR somewhere the doors really are open to you, even if they didn’t say it or invite you. The worse thing we can do in the moments where our self-truth is taking over, is to be alone – so even if not being alone means you are eating dinner somewhere by yourself, just interacting with people and getting out of your comfort zone will knock your loop off its axis enough to see things from a different perspective.

Doing one or any of these things isn’t going to mean you magically become a gratitude unicorn and that all of life is now seen through rose colored glasses, but it will help you find moments of gratitude in your day, if you are feeling less than grateful this holiday season. It will help put your loop on pause, long enough to be able to look up and find joy in the moment. Gratitude is a mindset - you have to practice it and you have to be able to break the cycle of your self-truth script - and that takes courage, reflection and finding ways to knock it off it’s axis. There is no one size fits all, what worked for me on Thanksgiving may or may not work for you (it may or may not work for me the next time), but dare to try and dare to find gratitude, even if you don’t want to.

I hope that this reflection helps to bring light, love, friendship, togetherness and hope to someone out there that is feeling alone this holiday season. Know that one moment of your life doesn’t define your story, but your thoughts do define what happens next. I know how hard it can be, to break yourself of the negative loop that plays inside your head, especially when you find yourself alone, in a funk or less than grateful for your situation. It is possible to rewrite the script but it does take digging deep sometimes to make it happen.

To each and every one of you, may you find gratitude this holiday!

<3,

Kristin